Ad blockers block ad networks. A fancy publisher like Economist doesn't have to use ad networks. They could sell online ads the way they sell print ads.
So there are trade-offs involved? Different parties have different interests? Different publishers use different models? That sounds about right, and contradicts the false dichotomy offered above.
The dichotomy is the same people who complain a lot about paywalls on HN are also blocking all ads and JS. Paywalls are the offered alternative to ads already.
You'd like to change the subject, but you haven't. I run uBlock Origin to encourage publishers to run their own non-privacy-violating ads from their own domains, the way they did before the ubiquity of surveillance capitalists. Every time publishers have asked me why I use uBO, I've told them that. That they can't adjust to market conditions, is their own failure of imagination. This impasse won't last forever, anyway. Today's unimaginative publishers will eventually be replaced by new ones with new models we haven't even considered yet.
I don't know much about The Guardian's financials but Wikipedia is only paying for hosting costs and some administrative staff which is easier than a newspaper where you've got to pay staff to write your content rather than having it written for free.
The guardian has all their content free and aggressively asks you to subscribe. Maybe there's more to their finances that I don't know about but they seem to be doing well.