Would much rather pay a small developer directly than be force-fed ads, even if the excuse is that the ads pay the bills. I don’t think this is a particularly unique sentiment and there are plenty of less scummy ways to generate funding than by running advertisements.
The funny irony is that because money is mostly made up bullshit anyway, we kinda could just decide to print more money and keep its value. Granted, it would take the unanimous agreement of basically everyone on this silly little planet, so the chances of this ever occurring are effectively absolute zero, but still, there is no actual rule that says we cant except for the ones we ourselves created
lol