But huge numbers of people apparently value the works we do produce today that have those expensive production values, and in the case of works created for utility rather than entertainment, the usefulness of the work may drop off rapidly if it's not as well made.
Technology has changed the landscape, and unless you're willing to live in a police state with strict regulations on general purpose computing and communications technology, that genie isn't getting back in the bottle.
Technology has changed many landscapes, but just because we can do something, that doesn't mean we should. Most people recognise that certain acts are harmful to specific people or to society as a whole, and we legislate to make those acts illegal. We can certainly debate whether copying a knowledge work under various conditions is such an act, and if so, whether copyright is an appropriate response, but I don't think "This is the way the world is, deal with it" is a compelling argument. Anarchy would be very unpleasant for many members of society.
When patronage was en vogue, we didn't have as high a rate of literacy or access to digital editing tools. These facilitations of the process of creation, even ignoring things like cheap paper and disposable writing implements that last months and cost less than a bottle of water, dwarf any legal changes that might otherwise apply (notwithstanding France's dark period of outlawing the printing press altogether as a tool of sedition). If copyright has anything to do with the current rate of creation, it is primarily by impeding the spread of inspirational materials that might otherwise hasten creative people's efforts. Compare copyright-controlled England with mostly copyright-free Germany in the 1800s to see how the freedom to copy and resell lit a fire under the asses of both writers and publishers, and created a lot more writers by spreading knowledge far and wide and as rapidly as possible to create a (for the era) highly educated population.
> it would take lots of very rich people giving up a lot of their wealth to get anywhere near funding just what today's movie industry costs
I think it's pretty clear that there is little correlation between relative level of funding and relative quality in the movie industry. In any case, there are other ways to get funding without relying on copyright than purely status-related patronage.
This is basically how blockbusters are financed nowadays, so it's a viable proposition. There's no evidence that changing from copyright to patronage would change that outcome.
I don't accept your premise. The situation is too similar to a tragedy of the commons, with a large dose of ignorance mixed in: most people outside the creative industries have no idea how much hard work by how many different kinds of people ultimately contributes to that smash hit music recording or novel or computer game. They just think of it as the latest track from $singer or the latest book from $author/$publisher or the latest game from $studio.
Take a look at how long the credits are the next time you watch a blockbuster movie that you enjoy, and see how many of the job titles you even understand. Unless you work in the movies, it will probably be a small minority, yet without all the others you probably wouldn't have enjoyed the movie nearly so much, assuming it even existed.
The trouble is, a lot of people have got used to two conflicting views in recent years: we expect ever higher creative values in works (which come with a higher sunk cost to produce the work initially) and yet we see that we can redistribute them cheaply and quickly (which implies a marginal cost near zero). If you don't have copyright, or some other economic tool, to amortise the huge sunk cost over a similarly huge audience, then you can't afford to make the work in the first place and the fact that the marginal cost of physical reproduction/redistribution is now near zero doesn't help you.