There is nothing crazy about it. Most research is funded by tax money and researchers have a moral and in some countries legal obligation to make their results

There is nothing crazy about it. Most research is funded by tax money and researchers have a moral and in some countries legal obligation to make their results accessible to the public. The traditional publishing model failed to achieve this. Open access journals are a simple and clean solution. You say "It used to be that the reader was the customer" but you don't explain why it should be this way.