This is a good argument. Diamond open access refers to academic texts that are published, distributed and preserved with no fees to either reader or author. Curt Rice points out that it used to exist in the pre-internet era: "Manuscripts circulated through departmental working papers series and informal scholarly networks." I remember those days. Rice writes, "What made this ecosystem possible was not heroism, but tractability: limited scale, manageable volume, and informal governance. And that is precisely what has changed." A lot of the commercial publishing infrastructure developed as a way to try to account for this scale, but it has failed as a scholarly activity. "Paying reviewers or editors reframes scholarly contribution as a transactional service rather than a professional responsibility embedded in institutional roles... More importantly, payment does not solve the problem of alignment. What many academics seek is... assurance that their professional contributions are recognized, supported, and valued within the institutions that depend on them." This makes sustainability for diamond open access publication an institutional responsibility, and underlines the need to built structures that supports it.
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