It's not really a poor argument. This was the understanding of how the internet worked before we decided to use the internet to replace TV. There was never a guarantee of payment to anyone running a public web server.

But I think you've highlighted exactly why net neutrality is terrible in practice (people effectively stealing bandwidth by blocking ads).

Physical newspapers lost money on printing and distribution. Subscription fees and purchase price did not cover the cost of printing and distributing that bundle of paper. The vast majority of their income was from ads. So your argument is really even worse with that in mind - physical newspapers were more dependent on ads than internet websites. And even with that in mind, I don't think anyone would say having a robot cutting out newspaper ads to be stealing.