And who are they going to have take over mod responsibilities (for free) in all of these communities at once? This is why mods need to call their bluff and force them to try to replace them.
So they want people to pay to not see ads? They literally sell that as a product, Reddit Premium. Why not tie API access to premium subscriptions? It's not even unprecedented; Spotify does this.
They finally did it: Reddit made it impossible for blind Redditors to moderate their own sub - r/Blind (libreddit.domain.glass)
r/TIHI has been banned for being unmoderated. (old.reddit.com)