Yea a bunch of these are reserved. I remember jumping through the whole process when we were designing a usb device.

To counter my own point, it takes money and people to run a standards committee and it is important to keep in mind that funding has to come from somewhere. Here are more details of what it takes to run one: https://stackoverflow.com/a/22968431/3908009

IMO they should either be funded by gov or by large companies.

Maybe in next versions they should choose 256 bits (or 160, like bitcoin) which would be the hash of a public key, an any vendor that provides a valid signature, can claim that 160 bit vendor ID. No more need for a central authority

I'm probably overengineering it, just pointing out it is technically possible

Can you sublet a vendor id, like a taxi medallion?