If it was easy to just buy a 3G radio and start hooking together nodes and create a new internet (with speed being a huge sacrifice), that could easily be the way forward.

Bitcoin is a good example that basically raised the stakes for control to >50% of the nodes -- any other quorum system would do the same, but that basically moves the problem to "who has enough money to buy/confiscate lots of nodes". The real solution is something provably and completely decentralized.

Maybe we need to go back to the stoneage -- create a new net, and start building the links one by one, person to person, and only use the traditional net as a place to store public keys or something.