The "goodest-old" publisher system is the learned societies that neither charge authors fees to publish nor lock their publications behind a paywall. These learned societies don't need to charge anyone any money (except for actual hardcopy printed volumes) because their operations are covered by the interest on massive endowments stretching as far back as the 19th century. Many national academies of science, and in the former Eastern Bloc the academic-publishing system inherited from the socialist era, work similarly. I'm lucky to be in a field where nearly all our journals and monographs are published this way (and Anna's Archive will have the rest), and it's a lot better than both the "good-old" system you refer to and modern "open access".