This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem being discussed.
The problem is the pressure to publish frequently, which leads to low quality science. Many of the nobel laureates had at most two, often zero, papers in graduate school. Now, they might require a graduate student to have seven or eight papers to get out. Some of this is a shift to sharing more data, but a lot of it is just science of minimal value being packaged up and pushed out.
And the drive for this does come from generic metrics, that rely not on scientific understanding, but on the ability to count. The government sometimes prioritizes funding by papers/$ funded for grant, papers/year, etc.
I think government officials don't have a direct interest in supporting the current inefficient publishing model, but it's a model that scientists themselves have accepted and reinforced since the 60s. If scientists put forward an alternative model that works better, i dont think governments or the wider public would object.
Social science has shown that a group of people can follow some rule even if all members disagree privately. This happens because there is social status, peer pressure and incomplete information, and so people tend to think that the others agree with the status quo.
I think because it seems so counter-intuitive you're ignoring this empirical observation. Scientists simply, believe it or not, don't have "complete control" over the situation.