I did find this:
http://vexxhost.com/dedicatedservers.htm
http://vexxhost.com/cloud_hosting/pricing
Maybe there is room for a startup to resell cloud computing at a more affordable rate. I realize I'm glossing over the technical details, but have run my own linux instances on Linode/TekTonic and they have been generally too much work to set up and too vulnerable to hacking. I'm more interested in thinking about what's possible. I need a preinstalled LAMP server with shell access that can scale indefinitely, starting at ~$10-20/mo. Right now I'm going through a reseller account for $18/mo but sometimes they don't answer their support tickets and I worry about scalability.