(Repost of <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38570370>)
(Repost of <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38570370>)
IPv6 was released in 1998. It had been 21 (!) years since the release of IPv6 and still what you're describing had not been implemented when Tailscale was released in 2019. Who was stopping anyone from doing it then, and who is stopping anyone from doing it now?
It's easy to paint companies as bad actors, especially since they often are, but Google, Cloudflare and Tailscale all became what they are for a reason: they solved a real problem, so people gave them money, or whatever is money-equivalent, like personal data.
If your argument is inverted, it's a kind of inverse accelerationism (decelerationism?) whereby only in making the Internet worse for everyone, the really good solutions can see the light. I don't buy it.
Tailscale is not the reason we're not seeing what you're describing, the immense work involved in creating it is why, and it's only when that immense amount of work becomes slightly less immense that any solution at all emerges. Tailscale for example would probably not exist if they had to invent Wireguard, and the fact that Tailscale now exists has led to Headscale existing, creating yet another springboard in a line of springboards to create "something" like what you describe -- for those willing to put in the time.