Sure, for printing. But printing isn’t the only form of subtractive color. Plenty of natural pigments exist. Those can be quantified with CMY or RGB values and then reproduced elsewhere, even though the natural pigment itself isn’t directly targeting those three wavelengths. My point is that subtractive color exists everywhere, using all sorts of natural color filtering mechanisms, and CMY is simply what printing uses.

Hell, the blue morpho butterfly doesn’t even use pigment to turn blue. Its wings have tiny microscopic scales that trap light, and blue is the only wavelength short enough to get scattered by the rods and be reflected. It’s still subtractive color, but it isn’t using pigments at all.