Will self-publishing help in this day and age?

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I'm one of those thousands of wannabe-writers who still has no real experience, and I know how tricky it can be to get a book published these days. For a lot of people who don't have the patience to wait for yet another year, or can't take a look at yet another rejection letter, self-publishing has always been an easy option to see their book in print. Yes, it has been around for a while now but it still doesn't seem like a lucrative option to many. That's because the real winner in the field of self-publishing is the publisher, and not the writer! The publisher could be the writer himself, but in most cases its someone else, like Lulu, or Createspace, or even an unknown publisher who lives across the street! I don't know about the last two, but Lulu is a publisher whose motto is something like "publishing a million books by different authors instead of publishing a million books by the same author". The million copies are sold, and the profits are pocketed by Lulu, but the profits to the authors is very small indeed! I hope you're getting my point here. So do you think that in this age, when ebooks are threatening the very existence of traditional books, will self-publishing really help the writers who are struggling to get their voice heard?