I dont understand this perspective. "Will you still like the product if all its functionality is removed?" Obviously not, but so what? When that day comes you can easily get rid of it.
The point is that paying YouTube now is encouraging them to do that in the future.
The whole thing is enshitification. YouTube is now making their product worse in order to push people to pay them more for it. Those who go along with this are likely to keep on paying as they gradually increase prices while reducing functionality.
Those who choose refuse to pay more to avoid having hour long unskippable ads and other nonsense are telling YouTube that this whole process will not be better for them in the long run. That they are fighting an unwinnable battle.
I get it when people were willing to pay before. Maybe they actually care about having YouTube Music, and they liked it as a convenient way to pay creators, and also chip in a bit for YouTube. What I don't get are those who choose to pay now that YouTube has started deliberately making their service worse by adding a ton more ads and now trying to keep you from blocking them.
And I very much do not understand anyone who is okay with any company going after adblock users, as you're just encouraging the Internet to get worse--either showing more ads or having to pay to access.