Normal is taking a publishers promises up the ass to fund the game. Granted if I see the next Need for Speed up on early access for $60 then yeah, I get what you are saying, but early access was made so small teams (or solo devs) can not starve while working on a passion project.
A couple of games that come to mind are BeamNG, which only released on early access after 3 years in development (and offering the full game at a very low price); it's still in development, almost 13 years so far, with regular updates. And Motor Town, which afaik is a team of two people, one making the world and the other doing everything else; they have been in development for 3 years now.
And example of a successful game that started in early access and was finished is Wreckfest. It took something like 5 years. If I remember correctly they had to take a publishing deal midway through, which is unfortunate, but the finished project is great.
Early access is an alternative way to stay afloat while making a game. At least, that's how it should be. Everything in life has risks. Losing $10-20 after a year of playing a game in development just to have the dev croak, lose interest, change career paths... Isn't that big of a deal. I'd much rather take that frustration and channel it to piece of shit publishers that axe games a few years after release, taking the full amount and running.
