As an author of two technical books, it cost me $0 to distribute because that was the publisher's job.

I got paid a pittance for the amount of time put into the works. I wouldn't have seen any more or less if someone pirated the books.

To add to this, I pirate books to see if it’s worth me buying the physical copy.

> It costs anywhere from $1500 to $6000 to have an "Open Access" scientific paper published.

Of course it doesn't. It costs just as much for you to publish any material as it cost you to publish this comment. If you need to pay up to $6000 in industry bribes for some career reason, that's some cost. But it isn't a cost of publishing.

If you're an academic, or want to be taken seriously by other academics (eg you're a self-educated expert) you want to be published in a journal because citations that link back to your blog will get you tagged as a crank - perhaps fairly, perhaps not. If your target audience is open-minded you can compromise by publishing on Arxiv.org or a similar site, but a lot of people will reflexively dismiss your work because it hasn't been through the peer review process.

The idea of peer review is a very sensible one. But (much like search engines) the process can be gamed by unethical actors; and where scarcity (of academic prestige) is enforced, rent-seekers invariably follow. Peer-reviewed journals charge a lot of money to submittants, but they generally don't pay the reviewers any of that. The money mostly goes into 'editing' - which is a little bit of curation and mostly proofreading - and administrative costs.

> If you're an academic, or want to be taken seriously by other academics

Ie, industry bribes (or call it levies) to benefit one's career. Rent-seeking, as you put it.

We have all the tools to move on from that. Many sectors already have. Public discourse and free debate is enough of peer review for any idea of enough importance, in my opinion. Especially considering that the public today is almost everyone in the world, including very special interests.