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There are so many books looking for audience, that almost all of them will always be shut out. There simply isn't enough audience. The question is, how do we decide which ones to shut out? Frankly as a reader, I don't want to do that myself. I only have time to read one or two books per week, and I'd rather skip the lousy ones without having to figure out which ones are lousy by reading them myself.
Publishers perform that weeding-out process rather better than me choosing based on titles or covers or synopsis or authors screaming "pick me pick me!". The author earns their percentage of what I pay for the book, by writing it. The publisher earns their percentage by shielding me from the slushpile. But the publishers are far from perfect, and are they doing their job well enough to justify the portion they get? Maybe not.
The problem with the big publishers and the indies both, is that there are always cheat codes, ways to work the system and squeeze things through even if they are terrible. The cheat codes for the big publishers are things like name recognition, personal connections, in-groups, and large amounts of money. The cheat codes for indies are things like authorial self-delusion, sockpuppets, and small amounts of money. The indie's cheat codes are available to anyone, and therefore more authors using them, hence way more volume. As a reader, I want to avoid books that are getting in front of my eyeballs due to someone cheating.
There are enough terrible books that cheated their way past the obstacles, now taking up space on the center stage, that there ought to be more room for good ones. But how do we get these cheaters off the stage and the good books onto the stage?
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