If we think of those middlemen as the thumb on the end of a garden hose, it's clear why the amplified reach models work. When information flows organically, it will saturate heavier near its source before spreading, then only slowly and so far. Income is time sensitive. With things like communities, the opportunity to create flow-channels for self-advertising already exists, but that part of nostr needs a whole lot of cleaning up to function properly as of yet. Even there, I don't know if the speed of audience/consumer growth will be fast enough to create a pursuable value for most creators & sellers. It's tricky to envision a system that discourages advertising but has enough economic activity to thrive. Even self-advertising gets to feeling invasive so there will be a constant audience loss & gain pattern for anyone who puts in the work to gain the follows, but then what time are they spending on creating quality content/products? 😅