Anyone doing academic writing, from students at university to scientists, nurses, doctors, engineers, math teachers, vets, all need to read and reference many, many of these academic texts to do any sort of research.
Now imagine every time you want to cite anything, you can only read the synopsis at best because every source wants you to spend $50.
It’s normal to need like 50 references for a research paper by the way (although students can get away with 10-20)
I’m sure locking the culmination of human knowledge behind a paywall and limiting the amount of people that can contribute to that knowledge will end well for the species.
Imagine how many otherwise good, smart, inventive people are denied their ideas form becoming real because of this - and all of corporate academia.
So many walls - paywalls, social walls, ideological walls, investment walls that rob the future from it’s youth. Remember the stories of Masters degrees being forced to work menial labor because no one would hire them? Few decades of that and you have generations of inspiration and creativity neutered. In porky speak - prevent competition from even realizing itself.
So much of our modern society is involved at a systemic level to forceably maintain the status quo.
Edit
Access to acedemia information is what got Aaron Swartz killed.