this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but this was the inevitable result of changing a function with trivial cost and broad social utility (name registration) from a public service to a commercial one. at the time we heard a lot of standard arguments about the innovation and competition that only a market based solution could bring. its really not a surprise that this is the kind of innovation that resulted.
I certainly wasn't nominating the US government. something more like international NGO. the us can do whatever it wants with the .us root, just like all the other ISO country code roots.
the internet corporations for names and numbers was established specifically to coordinate the for profit registrar model. but sure, an organization like that with a charter to simply manage the namespace directly.
Good news: you can choose a ccTLD (.us, .eu, etc); they're run by national government (or their designated operator), and the national government has sovereign control over how it's run.
On the other hand, if you want to have a say in how other registries are run, then consider joining an at-large structure (ALS) local to you or the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/civil-society
