Trivial
>third party review
Trivial, and happens just fine without publisher "help"
>offering visibility in a high quality journal?
Most journals are not "high quality." They're often very niche efforts, sometimes started and run as an easy way to get publication credits outside the handful of prestige publications.
Ambitious academics know that one way to raise your profile is to organise your own conference - and ask a publisher to collect and print the proceedings for you.
Obviously that's your opinion, but since when does the effort it takes to create something matter about the price? It's pretty trivial to move product from a factory to a retail store, yet people have no problem paying for that.
And again, if it's trivial, then there is nothing stopping anyone from starting their own journal. But amazingly, nobody has done that.
What's the saying about "find out why the fence is there before you tear it down"?
Most journals are not "high quality.
Who cares about most journals? Nobody reads them anyways. I'm talking Nature, Science, etc.
Absolutely not and there are plenty of examples. If I buy land and find oil underneath, it's zero effort for me to rake in the dollars. If I come up with a super complex device that takes me 1 year to build, the price is zero if no one wants it.
Price is driven by supply and demand.
You should know they are sometimes called "Tabloid journals" for a reason. Actual 'high-quality' or 'flagship' journals are most the most part unknown outside their discipline.