Your stance appears to be roughly "we've tried nothing and are all out of ideas, so let's keep doing objectively harmful things".

The simplest idea is not to accept the premise that an objectively harmful business model that only brings value to a shrinking minority is acceptable. Maybe commercialism of every part of the web isn't something that humanity needs. As for paying for access, there are plenty of extant models that have never been attempted with any seriousness.

Then again, the whole Linux ecosystem is able to thrive without bending the knee to the ad industry. There's no reason that a web browser cannot also thrive without ads except for a lack of desire to do so.