[osth]

VJ: "... Yet the economics of the internet tends to ensure..."

This may be the problem. Change the economics, solve the problem. Specifically, do away with the idea of "backbones" for ordinary users. Leave the backbones to research and military networks. That's what they were originally designed for.

Make the (people's) internet more like Baran's original idea. His diagrams did not have backbones. They looked more like "mesh".

A true mesh internet might mean slower speeds for its users, but that design will also reduce latency compared to our current "backboned" internet because there will be fewer "fast to slow" transitions (assuming users all have more or less the same capacity for moving packets).