Information has existed long before the invention of money, and will outlive it.

IMO it is a false dichotomy to equate piracy with theft like that.

I think 90-99% of anything pirated (or accessed by bypassing paywalls etc) would just never be bought/paid-for if there was no alternative.

Are there no ads on the site?

If you are OK with getting your information from one or two sources - why not. You can also subscribe to a newspaper. But surely internet can do (and did until relatively recently!) better than that.

Paywall epidemic is a recent phenomenon, internet media managed to exist before that.