“It’s run by an oligopoly of wildly profitable companies that coerce academics into working for free for them, and then sell the product of their labors back to the academics’ employers (often public institutions) for eye-popping sums.”
The public pays for the research. Academics write and review it for free. Publishers take the copyright and sell it back to the same universities for tens of thousands a year. Sharing your colleague’s paper down the hall is infringement. No other industry gets its raw material and labor donated.