"It's easy to forget, but patronage was the primary form of funding for the arts for the vast majority of human history."

You must mean "civilization's history" (~6,000 years), not "human history" (~200,000 years).

Throughout the history of civilization, peasantry, serfdom, and outright slavery were the primary source of labor, and provided the wealth that the very small patron class spent on art for themselves. Artists under patronage didn't create what they wanted. They created what their patrons wanted. Some was great, to be sure, but the comparatively narrow range of human expression from this period stands in sharp contrast to the cultural explosion that took place when modern economies allowed artists to follow their muses well beyond the suffocating folds of the aristocracy, which was chiefly interested in creating markers of its own power and domination.

This is not to say that industrialization set creative genius entirely free. As a practical matter, publishers and producers became the patrons by financing the development and production of work in hopes of selling access on a larger market. The critical difference is that the personal tastes and interests of the publishers gave way to those of the far more diverse general public. Thus, the astonishing creative explosion which began in the 19th century, and characterizes the 20th century. By killing off these middlemen, you destroy a vital link in this infrastructure in that you loose the people with concentrated piles of cash who are willing to underwrite the very risky and unpredictable process of artistic creation, and who do so not for their own enjoyment and social elevation, but for the much wider (paid) enjoyment of the general public.

Since this modern system of commercial patronage appeared, it utterly eclipsed everything that came before, in terms of output. Royal patronage is hardly an option in a country like America. Patronage by the Church isn't what it used to be. Corporate patronage is better known as "advertising", and patronage by the 0.01% is also out of the question unless you're exceedingly well-connected socially. Kickstarter is a great idea, and a welcome contribution, but comparing the projects there with the range of completed work on Amazon, and I'll think you'll start to appreciate the limits.

People are justifiably disenchanted with publishers in light of their abusive practices. But it's worth remembering that the scale of the abuse was a direct reflection of the deeper value they provided. And duplication and distribution, as it turns out, was the least of it. Yes, that's where they recovered their money. But the real cultural value was in their power to commission, and their willingness to put more freedom and control in the hands of artists than anyone had ever granted in the past. When you talk about "going back" to old systems it sounds a lot like telling suburbanites that they need to "go back" to sharecropping. In many ways, this reflects the broader economic trend that's actually playing out, in which a few enormously wealthy people tower over increasingly impoverished masses while the middle class flat-lines before going into reverse.

To my mind, this isn't something to celebrate.