Right now the approval process is too centralized. The beam foundation decides what can and can not be voted on. This can be changed to a fee in the form of beam to avoid spam and to make sure that the people that make a proposal are confident and serious about their proposal.
The height of the fee could be about 10, 20, 50, or 100 beam.
Not having to worry about approving would also free up time for the team to focus on other things.
The fee should be set by the person submitting the proposal. Then sort the proposals by those who pay most. People are smart enough know that higher fees does not equate to better proposals, only that the person seeks to be heard. The proposal itself would still have to stand on its own merits.
Having people compete may give the rich the upper hand.
It’s called the free market. You assume people are incapable of separating value from money. ff you and me are capable of doing so, why not anyone else? If a market is efficient it will of consumed all these possibilities. Not all markets are efficient, certainly not in the early stages, such as beam, but this is what we should be aiming for.
Agreed, the DAO proposals still feel too centralized
I think that the proposal submission fee should be fixed, but maybe it should come in price tiers which signify relative importance or speed at which it should be voted.
However, I do like the idea of some kind of bonding option where the proposer can lock funds into a contract which will be used for funding the proposal if it wins, but will be refunded to the proposer if it loses.
Maybe this kind of proposal could also cost a little more, as in, be a higher tier proposal. This would allow community members to donate to proposals. They could also have requirements, such as, the DAO or Treasury must also contribute a certain amount - or that anyone else can donate (bond) to the contract’s fund for the proposal - all of which would be refunded if the proposal fails and for which the proposal cannot pass unless the requested contribution is achieved.
The proposal could also have a time limit on it, governed by the proposer, such that they will be refunded on the deadline if the proposal has not passed.
Maybe they could be allowed to deposit BEAM, BEAMX, and NPH for the funding of the proposal. There should be some kind of update mechanism which portrays the total value of the proposal in one of the currencies, such as BEAM or NPH (US$) so that people could easily monitor its value at any particular time.
Maybe the proposer could also contribute more to the contract at any time prior to completion of voting. Obviously it would need to be transparent about the current status of contributions by all parties involved which covers 3 categories, Proposer, Treasury, and Anonymous Contributors (anyone else).
Super interesting subject! 
I don’t know much about DAO voting mechanisms, but I know that it’s an important topic, even more for projects like Beam that -because of the censorship-resistance and privacy aspects- need to be as decentralized as possible.
And I like very much the ideas being thrown here.
I will only add a comment recently made by @Rafun (Beam Team) in Telegram about this problem of the current centralization of vote proposals:
Yes, this will be addressed and resolved asap. We were considering a model similar to the Commonwealth on Cosmos, where anyone can propose a vote. However, to prevent spam, proposers will be required to lock a certain amount of tokens.