[pessimizer]

Honestly, if academics still choose to pay the established journals thousands to host single pdfs, they're paying for the brand. If schools still choose to subscribe to those journals when all of the papers in them are available for free, they're paying for the brand. The publishers legitimately own the brand.

The goal is for all public scientific research to be available to the public for free, not to smash middle-men. If your goal is to smash middle-men, you'll be smashing all day and all night for the rest of your life, and middle-men are generally better at smashing than you are.

Also, if you look at your job, you may be a middle-man yourself. Most upper middle-class people are.