Many of us are webmasters and therefore we know the values of links and quality links, which are necessary to build the authority of the website, this not only increases the current page rank of the website but also gives you a chance to get chances for your site to have more organic searches.
For this many webmasters depend upon the web directory submissions, either they do it themselves or they try to hire some one to do the same for them. Web directory like DMOz is so much successful because they accept quality links and is human edited.It is completely free of cost but it takes ages to get into DMOZ. Likewise there is a web directory known as site-sift directory, it costs a little bit to get into Site sift but the cost is negligible when you see the results afterwards. The directory is fully SEO optimized and is human edited so no illegal links like drugs,and casino links are into the directory.
If you are trying to get into DMOZ forget it right now , build your links from directories like Site Sift and when you get more and more back links then try to get into DMOZ.

I agree with you about the above observations. Site-sift seems like a good place to start. Using directories other than Dmoz is your best bet. Dmoz may have once been important but the long delay (that can at times take years) makes it not even worth looking into. If you still want a Dmoz-like link. Then your best alternative would be the new Project called Nomoz.org, a directory that is trying to fix all that is wrong with Dmoz technically and ethically.