NEAR and Governance: Introduction and my opinions
In the early days, NEAR have little adopters. To boost mass adoption, NEAR Governance acts as a hub for proposals, branching its reach to more users. We shall compare the similarity and differences of NEAR Governance with a traditional (country) government, and we include some personal opinions on the way.
First note: One is not a fan of politics and governance, and consider it a total waste of one's time (you don't have to think the same way one did), so information will barely touch the surface.
Comparisons
A traditional government exist to represent its community, to unite a supposedly-fragmented small groups/villages of people (without it), and (hope to) make the best decisions that move the entity towards something better. Similarly, NEAR Governance listens for new proposals from the community, plot its path (to growth), and make decisions on whether a proposal goes forward, merge with another proposal (perhaps by joining an existing proposal or redirecting two or more intertwined proposals to work together), or rejected (for a variety of reasons).
A group of core team will moderate the discussions, giving attention to proposals, read discussions, and provide comments. These discussions are split into various sectors, just like traditional government splitting into education sector, finance sector, (global) outreach sector, etc. Based on the NEAR Governance forum, one sees there exists the staking sector, the development sector, the education sector, the ecosystem sector, the community sector, and other sectors. Some sectors accept proposals, while others merely accept discussions or weekly reports from previously-accepted proposals. Nonetheless, the core team will browse through the sectors and provide attention to the threads.
The Governance also acts as a hub for communication. There may be events posted in NEAR Community to invite people to join and support. One think this is different from a traditional Government. Traditional government gives one a sense of, the "political leaders" (or sub-leaders, or sub-sub-leaders) speak in front, you decide whether you like his/her idea(s), then support him/her (or his/her "opposers" if you hate his/her ideas). In contrast, NEAR Governance (Community sector) allow whoever DAO/Guild to post events and invitations, without any specific leaders from the Core team to intervene, and people can join multiple events/groups as they wish.
Opinions
In one's opinion, if there are too little moderators/core team providing attention to the forum, things will certainly be missed unless its sufficiently attractive. A governance is a little-to-many organization. A few moderators are dividing their attention to many people, whom propose various acts that might or might not add value to the ecosystem. This means, when proposal floods the forum, there are insufficient attention to attend to every single proposal, hence there will be proposals that are neglected, with or without being read. The neglection could have various meaning, ranging from it already exists and NEAR Foundation/Core doesn't want to fund similar projects anymore, to it doesn't add value to the ecosystem. Whatever the reason is, attention is scarce.
In real world, we have government sector and private sector. The government only have enough funds to feed these many people/groups, and the rest requires starting up by themselves, without any funding from the government. Based on one's experience, most, or perhaps all, DAO, Guilds, and proposals, are dependent on NEAR Governance for paying their work. This is expected, as the world of cryptocurrency is new. Web2 is free: people take advantage and take for granted that "EVERYTHING" around them "should" be free. No, people should not be paid for their work or their resources. But "I" need to be paid for. "I" must be paid for my work, but I'm not willing to pay others for their work (ignoring volunteers). This makes starting up as a private sector difficult. As for now, NEAR Governance can still support a wide range of projects; but there will be a limit, when the money pool gets shallow and dry, alternatives should be seek.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the NEAR Governance serve its purpose to boost adoption rate, acts as a communication hub, and act as a discussion forum for the NEAR Community to propose an idea, communicate with other NEARians, and discuss about matters concerning individuals/the ecosystem. NEAR Governance is a DAO, sufficiently decentralized. For further decentralization, the "private sector" might need a head start so a Guild/DAO/team could source their own funding than being dependent on the Governance.
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(If there are any mistaken ideas one made, and you wish to change one's thought on them, feel free to comments below, and one will read and consider).
