gorhill makes a moral argument on the other side of yours [1]:
That said, it's important to note that using a blocker is NOT theft. Don't fall for this creepy idea. The ultimate logical consequence of blocking = theft is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy.
Your analogy is flawed because it assumes the customer walking into the store retains their privacy and is not charged any hidden costs.
A more accurate example would be one in which the customer walks into a store that:
* data mines as much about that person as possible to profile them
* sells that data without consent to unvetted global buyers
* increases the risk that customer's devices are compromised (drive-by malware installs through ad placements on mainstream sites)
* charges them a hidden surprise fee (in the form of increased data usage, battery usage etc from poorly-designed ad systems).
Presenting naive analogies is harmful to our ability as a society to reason about the costs of systems like this.
I'd urge anyone to have a read and/or follow Ad Fraud Historian to understand how bad / harmful the existing ad-tech ecosystem is. [2]
It's truly awful, and anything that moves the internet away from this dystopian, incompetent and fraudulent monetisation approach to content is doing all of humanity a huge favor.
[1]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy
[2]: https://twitter.com/acfou
