With a bit of knowledge, one can launch over a thousand nodes around the world via VPS and the help of bash script, in few hours.
Yes it is a problem and solving it is damn easy.
What we can start is to run a full node at home and at work (if possible) and also run some VPS.
If most people do it, problem solved so just do it.
Is it just me or are most people on this post missing the point?
The problem is not whether we can host more nodes or not. The problem is that it is not being done, even if it is easy. Why? because there's no incentive for most people, in fact there's negative incentives to do it. Aka blockchain bloating and no immediate benefit.
The idea that saying things like "people ought to support the network our of a none financial sense of reciprocity" is sadly naive, even if fair.
Mining is also more centralized than ever and this is becoming worse over time with not expectation of reversing. Right? Since all the rewards go to miners, node hosting becomes charity.
How do we solve this?
Well, the first question is, does it matter? What are we losing with the centralization of nodes? is it a worse problem than the centralization of mining?
if we decide more nodes is better than less, than one option is to say, something like 10% of mining rewards per block go to a random node, or are distributed among x random nodes.
Sort of like Darkcoin's Master Nodes are financially rewarded.
Would this centralize mining more or make some miners go out of business? I don't know. I frankly think Mining is unnecessary, Proof of Stake and similar innovations have already solved this problem, or atleast made it less of a problem. particularly with appropriate early distribution of funds.