Lots of scientists will just send you their article if you email them. They don’t get the money when you pay to read it - often they pay to submit. Reviewing journal articles is a privilege and doesn’t get you paid. The prestige of a scientific article is from the number of times people have cited it. The only “harm” done is that the publisher doesn’t get to make 100% profit for doing nothing.

Journal publishing is mostly a way to extract money from universities. Elsevier and its ilk name whatever price they think a research university can afford.