That's a fair point. One thing I'm getting from this discussion is that it's difficult to generalize when it comes to academic publishing, because norms vary substantially between fields. I've seen the copy editing "nits" you mention at the end of reviewers' letters in my field (history) but I suspect that historians would rebel if the copy editor's job was entirely foisted off on us.

Likewise, it's normal for editors in my field to make meta-level suggestions about writing style. I'd wager that history journals place a greater emphasis on prose style than CS journals do, since making an historical argument often depends on telling a compelling narrative. Hence a publishing model that works for a CS journal might not work for humanities journals and vice versa.