If it is less expensive, does that mean quality goes down?

“You can’t have high quality and inexpensive (affordable) open access fees” - usually said in context of PeerJ.

I keep hearing variations of this from stakeholders in the publishing industry. Typically it’s coming from people with vested interests in maintaining the status quo, i.e. high margin subscription sales or high cost hybrid Open Access options. 

Is this true some of time? Yes. Is it true all of the time? Not at all. One needs to look no further than the Japanese auto industry as evidence of this. Honda, Toyota, etc. All cheaper, and near universally better products than their American counterparts. 

Being less expensive does not necessarily mean lower quality. It does suggest less greed, however. Value has nothing to do with cost.