There are 160 million registered .com domain names.
I understand that operating root servers isn't free, but surely they don't cost $1.5 billion per year! Wikipedia's hosting costs are $3 million per year, for comparison.
Which begs the question, why doesn't ICANN just replace Verisign them with a different authoritative register that charges much less?
We could use anti-scalping techniques, but that’s non-trivial to implement. Perhaps some name squatting policy? No idea how to enforce it though, especially without money.
Shouldn't ICANN collect that margin and use it for charitable purposes instead?
I think the current system is inherently flawed... but it kinda works, and nobody wants to figure out the politics of fixing it – so I guess we’re stuck with it for a while.
The vast majority of people in the world have $0 on the line and no clue how these systems work.
The majority who have an interest in fixing it have something like N×$10 per year on the line for a fairly small N.
Those who don't want it fixed have billions on the line.
It's not getting fixed anytime soon.
(.com is basically price-regulated because of this, FWIW, Verisign can't just raise prices whenever or however it wants. But obviously it's still a pretty sweet deal for them, I'd imagine.)
I assume some registrars sell these at a loss and expect to offset that by selling you WordPress Supreme Ultra Enterprise hosting for... $40/yr? No idea how this works.