You're absolutely right, and yet the romantic in me still thinks there is hope. I have an excellent example where some friends used to run a wifi mesh in my ci

You're absolutely right, and yet the romantic in me still thinks there is hope. I have an excellent example where some friends used to run a wifi mesh in my city. They handed out mesh nodes to small business owners like restaurants and corner shops. These devices were tiny, and only required power since they were mesh nodes. The point here is that these nodes lasted for years. Sometimes we went around and restarted, or updated firmware, but by and large they worked so well that they were forgotten by the business owner. This was 10 years ago, today a local web server, or similar device, might work in a similar way. One idea would be to integrate it into their internet package. They get a router that gives their shop wifi, at the same time it also runs their ordering system. I think it's possible, anything is possible if you're motivated, but large businesses don't like independence. They prefer that small business and end users are dependent on them.