Because inequality creates incentive. The bigger the difference between the bulk of the society and the top percentages of earners the more people are willing to risk to reach the top. That’s why there are more successful startups in the US than in Scandinavia.
It’s a global rat race and the US is “winning”.
Good contents and ideas - which are actually implemented in Open Research Europe system. Minimal checks and balances, peer review as public comments after publication.
However I don’t fully agree that peer review as we have today is worse than nothing. I published a bit and reviewed a bit more. I have marked for rejection probably a third of published papers for basic methodology errors that fully invalidate results. Those papers would just add to the noise that already exists via thousands of papers published…