It's an interesting question. At the start, it would be somewhat chaotic, also depending on how you define "existing publishers". Currently, many funders/univer

It's an interesting question. At the start, it would be somewhat chaotic, also depending on how you define "existing publishers". Currently, many funders/universities determine who to give grants/tenure/etc by looking at the journals researchers have published in. They will still be able to do that for a while. However, for academics, it wouldn't be entirely clear what to do. For example, if you choose to only disband paywalled journals, they will likely simple submit their works to open access journals, and over time some of those will emerge as the new "good ones". Which is an interesting parallel, because that is sort of what Plan S tries to do. Except that it doesn't really have the power to "break up" paywalled journals, but only to deny them the ability to publish work they fund. As more and more funders join (like these Chinese funders appear likely to do), the closer this will get to "breaking up". If you were able to disband all journals, but not preprint servers, then researchers would probably start publishing their work there, new servers would emerge for disciplines that don't have one yet, and some new system of determining "excellent" work will probably emerge. (Disclaimer: I'm working on one such system.) If also preprint servers were disbanded... I don't know - nobody would be able to publish any more? Would you allow new publishers to be created?