Profit is reward for taking a risk. Don't like that a .com costs more? Use another TLD.

Verisign did not take a risk by developing the dns system - network solutions did that. Verisign maintains a perfect monopoly over the addition of records to a central database, with minimal operational costs. Their business is almost pure profit by operating a mandatory service with highly inflexible demand. If they were forced to compete on providing access to a core internet infrastructure (e.g. allow competitors to also add records to the .com registry) the price would lower to the actual cost of providing the service, which for an update/add query, I suspect would be in the pennies.

Network solutions did not develop the DNS either.

What risk did Verisign take, and how would the Internet change if they weren't rewarded for it?

Downvoted by "temporarily impoverished" billionaires who've changed their middle name to Elon.

I'm not full-on anti-capitalist, but market failures like this are an obvious issue.

Exactly. Capitalism stifles innovation by taking resources from society and concentrating them into the hands of a few. If society was more equitable and if social safety nets were larger, we would see more people taking chances and innovating. Instead we have a society where people work under the duress of losing food and shelter, not exactly the best way to drive creativity.

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Are you saying that I'm not allowed to suggest improvements to society if I participate in society?

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