Right now, "I published in Nature" is simply a proxy for "I published an important paper." or "I am a productive faculty member." I certainly agree that these are valuable messages to signal.

My entire point was that better and more objective ways are being developed that can signal this same message, while cutting out the cost and inconvenience of the journal middleman. The exact recipe for these better ways is still an open question, but I do know several people who are working on it, and I listed several specific examples.

Branding no doubt plays a role. But there is already a major trend towards downplaying branding in favor of more objective metrics like impact factor and the H-index. And I do hope that science can be held to a slightly higher standard of objectivity than the general economy (maybe that's too idealistic?).