[serichsen]

The most pressing problem of our modern information society is the abundance of crap.

The service peer-review provides is the filtering of crap, so that not everyone has to do that by himself. This makes science possible, as not everyone can be a master of all trades.

Publication without review is called "journalism".

As a side note, I believe that Elsevier has acquired an extreme market dominance in the scientific publishing sector and is abusing it in alarming ways.