Absent manual distribution of keys, it is always the host's choice who their users must trust to verify their identity - the equivalent statement currently is "

Absent manual distribution of keys, it is always the host's choice who their users must trust to verify their identity - the equivalent statement currently is "Why should anybody's choice of CA determine whether their users can trust SSL?". Allowing seperate, clearly dilineated trust domains that are obvious to the user is a good idea, because it would facilitate competition between the trust anchors of those domains. If a trust domain built a reputation for highly trustable, carefully-validated certificates, it could charge a premium. A ".CH" domain as the online equivalent of a Swiss bank account? (probably not literally .CH of course, given their reputation regarding crypto). Having those trust domains associated with governments is also reasonable: the citizens that government is answerable to can punish conspiracies and cock-ups, and all corporations are ultimately answerable to a government, so by trusting a corporation you are really trusting a government anyway. (By the way, I am not a spear-carrier for DNSSEC - I would just like to be able to restrict the domains that a CA is able to vouch for).