Most of the stuff in lower orbit is government research satellites and dead stages (by mass).

Commercial is generally higher geostationary orbits.

"The wealthy" you mean SpaceX are relatively new and are able to self deorbit.

There is some commercial activity in the lower orbits that has not deorbited, old Iridium and so on.

This is not really crowdfunding its investment funding.

It's how every startup works. They aren't crowdfunding like a kickstarter, these are already wealthy people investing money because they hope the concept will take off and earn them many times what they contributed. Why have existing companies clean up their own mess when you can create a new company to get paid by existing companies and take a slice of that pie.