Really? I mean, I agree that the game rocks, but I never figured it as all that much of a dilemma...
Micromanagment increases the time it takes to complete a turn, but had no in game cost. If you have a girl fucked to exhaustion and give her a full turn off she will be back to full (barring extreme injury), and sex increases sats so if you keep a girl alive and working long enough she earns more per customer and (usually) can see more customers.
A successful run on the catacombs with a high combat/magic girl (so, basically any monster girl with a couple hundred gold of combat gear) can bring back 1,000 + gold, a few monster girls, and 10,000 + gold in magic items.
If the girls are happy you don't even need guards. With Wonderful Accomodations (which don't cost much) you can charge a free girl 100% of her income and she won't lose happyness so she will never run, and rival gangs only attack territory or steal money, they don't hurt girls.
If you ever need to do something that you need guards for (like take money from girls or brand them) you can set all of your gangs to guard, and when you are done set them back to acquire territory or whatever. If you ever wonder how much gold your girls have set one of the gangs to "spy on girls", check, and then change the gang back that same turn.
Being cruel has no benefits (other than being fun, obviously), so the choice is "Be callous and userous for great profit, or be a complete monster for fun?", and really you don't need to choose between the two because you literally cannot lose the bame.
Pissing on your parade?