I pretty much agreed with the rest of your post. If you believe you can create something that will be valuable (where that something could be knowledge) but you lack the capital to invest in creating that something then you need to raise that capital somehow. Convincing someone to supply the capital is one route, self-funding another. If you can't make either of these work then you should at least consider the possibility that you are wrong about the future value of what you believe you can create.

As a side note, it is an economic fallacy to suppose that salaries should directly reflect the value created by the worker. The price of labour, like any other price, is determined by supply and demand.