Although I have no doubt that, like every other field, academia is filled with politics; and publishing process probably helps enforce such politics.

However, I would argue that modern academic publishing is absolutely necessary to produce "useful" science. In order for people to build upon others' result, they will need strong guarantee of correctness, which necessitates the review process ; and top conferences can also save researchers a lot of time to find impactful new research, especially new ideas.

That being said, I am absolutely not suggesting the publishing system is not without its problems; but I kind of agree with LeCun here, publishing is a important part of the process, and it is will probably out-last both Tesla and Elon.