I don't pay for premium. But that's more on principal, all their premium features are easily available just by using the brave browser, I don't think the analogy of premium and paying users is correct, I am happy to pay for content just not to YouTube.

As a counter argument all of Netflix's content is paid and people do pay for it

Also ad models can evolve where it's the creators that get the ad revenue and not the platform, incentivizing them to let users stream their content for free and bearing the hosting cost for their videos.

These are not very outlandish ideas, it's just that YouTube has spoilt us and made us believe that this is the only way things can work.