There isn't an actionable plan for the pool included in this proposal, no team, no ROI no metrics, thus I see it as simply an observation that some people can't afford the 500A. Ok, fine.

But if they can't afford the 500 Ada to register, and can't borrow from friends family, how likely is it that they will be able to acquire a delegation amount which would justify the effort here? There needs to be some effort and skin in the game, and the 500 level already seems to be achievable with a bit of hustle and we already have an example of that from Cameron.

Already possible to create a multisig and register it as a dRep.

The ideal democracy would be one digital identity = one vote. However, history has shown that the majority are unable to organize. Perhaps as cryptogovernance evolves, with digital accountabilty, a true democracy may prove workable - which would be nice. For now a representative governing body is needed to make progress. It is challenging to determine which Drep to delegate to. If representative bodies woud like to form who do not have funds individually, then I believe there should be a CLEAR and EASY path to collectively put forward 500 ADA into a refundable smart contract, thus giving a voice to motivated participants.

What would be the smaller amount? Are there any other safety conerncs, or only, one must have some skin in the game ?

I think 500 ADA is good number (however in my country many people have salary below this number). 500 ADA is a deposit, it's kind of a proof of "skin-in-the-game", that DRep thinks about this activity seriously. This amount will be returned in the future.

Do you mean creating a party, or DAO, via smart contract? The idea being that a group can be organized around any set of principles or shared interests. Public parties could be discovered on a list on this site for anyone to join and the group can self organize their discussions and vote internally on goverance actions. The party would have some voting mechanism to select the winning choice, for example simply use ADA power. The winning choice would then be made on the governance proposal. How to resolve deposits, disbanding a party, and returning deposits would need to be clarified. Perhaps for example any member could send deposit to the party and if the total deposit drops below the 500 ADA the DRep is disbanned and the deposits returned. If members want to reactive the party they can increase the deposit amount back to 500 ADA. This could allow people to organize and actively participate in governance and pool their total delegation power together, whether they can meet the standard 500 ADA deposit or not.

I think there needs to be some skin in the game so to speak, but for those without the means to post the 500 ADA, that skin wouldn't necessarily need to be monetary. Perhaps we could put a mechanism in place whereby those folks who are interested in becoming DReps but don't necessarily have the 500 ADA to deposit could alternately be awarded DRep status by getting a certain number of 'signatures' from other ADA wallet holders. That would ensure that the individual has skin in the game and also allow all members of the community a fair chance to participate in governance.

500 is a good number

That's a much more inovative and creative solution than reducing the deposit requirment. I would love more technical details. It would be important that such an implementation would ensure that the deposit is returned to the treasury/pool once the dRep retires. It may also be worth including a mechanisum to deregister a drep if they ever become inactive. Finally the staking profits of the deposit should probably be diverted back to the treasury. One concern is that whoever controls the application process would have significant power to filter who does and does not become a drep. Its also worth noting that if we do this we would effectivly be giving 500 ada of voting rights to each recipient... are we sure we want to give people power they haven't earnt or bought (buy in is important for any proof-of-stake mechanisum)? In a very real sense this violates the entire principal of proof-of-stake (proof-of-buy-in). For now I'm going to say we should not do this, however its an intresting approch and a good starting point for deeper conversation. Perhaps a better solution would be a croud funding based approch such that delegators can commit funds to a drep who has not yet registered and once the 500 ada requirment is meet the drep becomes registered.