I've been reading the links you posted, and although I'm by no means an economics expert, it doesn't sound good to me. I'm a very small and very new shop and I reckon I would fade before I got time to flourish!
As for alternatives, I don't know about the US but here in the UK is a website very similar to Etsy called Folksy (www.folksy.com). I haven't registered with them yet, but it seems to work in a very similar way, so if Etsy were to change, for UK sellers this would be a great alternative (but limited to the UK only unfortunately). I'm thinking of setting up a second shop there to reach more local people.
