You don't have to buy them if you request a copy from the authors. The authors don't make any money when you pay to download a paper from a journal. So they'd have no reason not to send you a pdf.
It's not about convenience it's about how some of us things should be. Which is that (at the very least scientific) knowledge should be free and open and accessible and we don't see why a private company should be making huge profits (and even worse influence the direction of science) while they are offering almost nothing in return.
But it is. You just have to email the authors and wait a bit.