The MakerDAO/DAI community fucked up. People have criticized that community's collateral choices for a long time, as the article mentions, it is pejoratively called "wrapped USDC".
Their primary issue was being early and there weren't really collateral choices.
There was no trustless bridge for Bitcoin when they needed it. So they wound up using BitGo's WBTC. People got afraid of the volatility of the assets so started approving stablecoins as collateral, and Tether wasn't an option, other stables didn't exist, so they went with USDC.
For more modern iteration of this concept with different collateral choices and community ethos, look at Magic Internet Money $MIM (yes, naming is intentional re-appropriation). So far all the collateral are yield generating assets, they generate yield from liquidity pools and volume. The automated liquidation functions the same and its worked. It has ancillary issues from its founder's reputation on other projects, so there is still room for yet another stablecoin that inspires more confidence without really needing the baggage of a leader.
At some point when the incentives keep driving these "institutions" to make choices like this maybe you need to start questioning how the existing structures drive those incentives forward.
This rhetorical comment actually has a specific answer. MakerDAO tokens were sold to VCs like Andreesen Horowitz and Polychain and Dragonfly, the latter of which are less patient crypto native funds, who wanted the infrastructure for trading immediately. Their outsized ownership allowed for ethos breaking changes, to great financial success, but before organically created infrastructure was in place. There were no liquidity pools, liquidity pool optimizers, borrowing and lending protocols, value extraction.
Again taking a look at Magic Internet Money, one part of the structure is that their SPELL token (the equivalent of the MAKER token) was launched more organically and at least has been able to keep an ethos within the owners. Nothing here prevents more consolidated ownership, or any novelties in governance (and I argue that governance can be vassstly improved, there are no bylaws or even continuity between governance anywhere). Only a case study into the contrast between MakerDAO and the answer to your rhetorical comment.
Their primary issue was being early and there weren't really collateral choices.
There was no trustless bridge for Bitcoin when they needed it. So they wound up using BitGo's WBTC. People got afraid of the volatility of the assets so started approving stablecoins as collateral, and Tether wasn't an option, other stables didn't exist, so they went with USDC.
For more modern iteration of this concept with different collateral choices and community ethos, look at Magic Internet Money $MIM (yes, naming is intentional re-appropriation). So far all the collateral are yield generating assets, they generate yield from liquidity pools and volume. The automated liquidation functions the same and its worked. It has ancillary issues from its founder's reputation on other projects, so there is still room for yet another stablecoin that inspires more confidence without really needing the baggage of a leader.