Re:taxpayer funded (Score 1)

In that case, editorial groups can select papers they consider particularly interesting. Such groups may end up being similar to the current major journals, but they would not hinder access to scientific results

And how does that get paid for? Isn't that just pushing the same subscription money around a little differently? Sure, you could access the material for free, but there's so much of it that you can't make heads or tails of it. So you end up paying for editorial oversight, and we're right back where we started.

Also note that open archives without editorial oversight like arXiv are already being gamed for advantage.