Discover better ways to support people who do useful work. Or rather, re-discover them since they are older than ads.
YouTube is an amazing platform. It has allowed people to make videos about things they want and allowed people interested in that content to find it. Allowing people to pay (in various ways) for what they want means that other people can step up and provide that service instead of doing something else.
A good heuristic for when financial transactions are “gross” is if you are dealing with strangers or not. If you call your spouse from work and ask them to make and bring you a sandwich for lunch we would be horrified if they said it’ll cost you $20. On the other hand, no one should feel offended if you get charged when you call up a stranger to do the same thing.
There are different incentives at work in different spheres of life. Society depends on strangers doing things for other strangers. Google the Fatal Conceit to get the full picture. Bottom line is that there is nothing “gross” either for paying for something you want from a stranger or of them being paid for something they did for you.
You seem to think that YouTube is "every human exchange". I'm going to let that speak for itself.
People can freely decide whether they want to sell the content they've created or give it away for free. If it's the former, they should sell it, and if it's the latter, they should give it away for free. They just cannot and ought not rely on business models that restrict how people display information on their devices that has been sent to them voluntarily. As I said in the beginning, I have no quirks with Youtube going subscription-only.
Other people's mileage may differ, of course. It's just a personal preference.