I don't see why would it. You can submit papers without an affiliation, so the idea of publishing only tax-funded research is a generalization. That is, these organizations do work by being selective and then selling the collections of that selection process back.
Granted the publishers do work. Even PLoS does work. It's the lack of access that is the problem. $42.50 for an article one of my colleagues at my own US Government institution wrote (random example from this weekend's work, American Journal of Bioethics) is ridiculous.
I thought in most cases the author is free to provide copies of his/her own articles directly? Is it not true that you could just ask your colleague for a copy of what he submitted for publication?
