As a scientist who does not need extra brownie points, this is exactly what I'm doing: every single review request coming from an Elsevier publication is ignored.

And, yes, it is the quality of peer review (i.e. the work done by unpaid editors and reviewers) that makes a certain publication prestigious or not.

Elsevier does typesetting and distribution, both of which can easily be done otherwise (see LaTeX and Sci-Hub). It sure as hell does not do peer review.

Scientists are indeed moving slowly in that direction. It seems you are under the mistaken belief that they complain without doing anything about it. The fact that someone is vocally unhappy with a flawed status quo, does not mean they are not doing something about it. However, the issue with status quos is that it takes time to change them. Why are you ranting even after being shown examples of scientists doing exactly what you want them to do?

Also, it is indeed the presence of very selective peer review that is a big part of "prestige". This is why free community driven open access journals are slowly overtaking the old journals. The price of a journal publication does not correlate much with the prestige. There are even examples of reverse correlation.

That is what has occurred in Uruguay and Egypt. If that grants universal access to the people, then it is a solution. The problem with that model, though, is that governments are then double-paying in many cases. First by paying for the research that birthed the paper and then by paying for access to the paper that resulted from the research the government paid for.