It sounds like you've been dangerously exposed to the SEO mindset. It sounds like you think it matters to a business whether its website is "listed in Google."
I don't believe that. I've actually talked to too many successful proprietors of small businesses. And they either didn't have websites at all, or didn't even know about the ODP. (Whenever I deal with a small businessman, or think about dealing with a particular small business, you see, I check these things.)
In my experience, professionals don't whine about Walmart having a larger marketing budget. They don't hector Saatchi about changing its price sheet, or CNN about giving them free publicity. They are prepared to pay for what advertising they think they need, and they focus on advertising that's effective (rather than trying to hire big-name/big-money marketing firms.) They know they must do this, because they know they will fail if they don't; and if they fail it will be altogether their own responsibility.
Anyone who doesn't have that attitude, isn't a small businessman. He's a big parasite.
As for "new" sites -- yes, the way the world has always been, a real reputation doesn't come instantly, it follows only a long period of consistent achievement. Even the best legal blog on the net took almost two years of slow growth before the news-media noticed (although it was listed in the ODP after only a few months.)
And the way the world has always been, there are some people who expect to be able to use PR to achieve instant reputation without the necessity of showing anything at all. And they are usually frustrated.
Google won't ever change THAT, it focuses on recognition of a site by other sites. The ODP won't ever change that, even with its own systematic bias in favor of small sites. Both of them try (in different ways) to recognize (some form of) achievement. And both of them may (in different ways) provide more competition for sites both great and small -- by making people more aware of the sites that have already established authoritativeness or achieved a reputation. And this may make it harder for sites without unique sources of content to survive. (Another way of saying the same thing: this may make it unnecessary for sites without unique sources of content to exist at all!)
But in the end, they are just a search engine and directory, not a bloody immantization of the eschaton. The ODP itself is not and cannot be a monopoly: it's just one group of people who collaborate in finding information that they think is useful. Anyone else can go look for information on their own; anyone else can choose to use (or not use) any of the information the ODP provides. Despite the thousands of people that have contributed millions of hours of effort to the ODP, so far as Google is concerned, it's just another website (well, maybe, just two other websites) with no more intrinsic authority than Joe Blow's Blog. The only authority the ODP has (in Google's eyes) is what other websites link to it.
And, for that matter, Google isn't and can't be a monopoly either. ITS only authority is the number of people who think it gives them more information than its competitors do. Google would be replaced by a truly superior product just as fast as Google displaced the spam-smothered search engines of the 90's.
Of course, any such Google replacement would almost certainly be much harder on new sites than Google is -- because you know as well as I do that "new sites" are far more likely than established sites to be pure affiliate/doorway/MADFADS/etc. spam -- and spam is the major problem for search engines -- and therefore any truly superior search engine will have to take both of those facts into account.
It would be a pity if affiliate/etc. spammers forced the search engines even further away from listing new, small sites, as they have already slowed the rate at which ODP editors find legitimate sites. But the spammers are pitiless -- they do not care how many people they hurt, just so long as it gets them another potential pizzley pittance of advertising revenue.
