Are you disagreeing with the person you replied to? Your tone suggests that you are, but the content of your post seems to being agreeing.
Meaning, if advertisers hadn’t built more and more intrusive ads and had stuck with static ads that don’t severely harm the UX, then I doubt most users would bother with ad blockers.
The advertiser arms race has resulted in a classic tragedy of the commons. That's my diagnosis of the problem. Traditionally regulation is needed to fix that. Exactly what that entails is beyond me.