We keep stuck in the past because we won't deploy realistic things but keep discussing about how it could work in an ideal situation and with infinite human resources (financial resources as well in the past, but that is less of a problem now). The current discussion quickly moved on from creating a new more usable backbone network into enterprise-grade systems, worldwide announcement of the entire address space, use of hardware routes rather than VMs, etc etc.
I don't see how deploying some actual hardware is unrealistic. A VPS-based solution will not scale well because in the VPS, you're buying into a system that's oversubscribed by design and you're at the mercy of the software layer inside of the VPS system the host is using. The other consideration is that right now, practical use of 44Net address space is limited by all of the technological hurdles you already summarized so well. If we deploy an easy-to-use system that support things like a single OpenVPN connection for an endpoint or easier tunneling, then usage is likely to ramp up quickly. Having real systems designed in an "enterprise" way actually cuts down on user support problems later on or the need to redesign-on-the-fly as you grow. No one wants to be trying to rebuild the plane while it's in the air.
Jason