[tamcap]

There is a non-insignificant amount of work to take a paper from submission to publication. It's hard to determine the exact value / cost of that work, but article publication fees (and subscription fees!) is one way that work is paid for. So while I am sympathetic to your argument, one could then say that "rich" researchers should (based on an arbitrarily chosen morality) pay for open access, and the "poor" ones should go to low APC, subscription journals... I am not sure I like this argument either.

Now, researchers are slowly getting new tools where that cost is accounted for in other ways. I.e. The Winnower, biorxiv, etc. Whether one day one of those, or a future invention will replace academic journals, only time will tell.