Isn't this what the new TLD domains rollout addressing?
I would argue that for most users domain names simply aren't important anymore. When I want to go to the website for, say a local bicycle shop, I just Google them, and it doesn't matter if they have companyname.com or companyname-of-burlington.com, the GOOG finds them (not just by my terms but also proximal searching, etc).
To some degree I do think this "problem" will be self-resolving -- the domain landgrab is largely over, and many are stuck with domains that they are costing them yearly for absolutely nothing (when searching for domains I tend to find that the overwhelming majority that are taken are dead-ends or placeholders. At some point people will just abandon them).