An idea I've been tossing around: What if domains cost $100 if more than one person wants it? The idea here is to squeeze the squatters with 000s of domains.
Whenever I want a domain, most of the ones I want are taken. Not by people who are making use of it, but by people who are squatting in hopes of extorting anyone who would actually use the domain to produce value.
I'd actually be happy if Verisign or any other private company or any government extracted such an unfair price for useful domains because it would free up so many more useful domains for use.
Edit: I'd love to hear good arguments against this, I'm partly throwing this out there to see others thoughts.