You could create your own DNS server with its own routes and registrars.
If you got enough people to use your DNS network you could create your own registrars and your own rules.
Users would need to switch to your DNS, but otherwise there isn't anything about how the Internet works that requires you to use the big dog DNS
I think you may have missed my point.
.gov is not the same as .gov.us (in this example, .gov is not the tld, .us is) Tlds like .io belong to countries, there is no going back to .gov or .com because countries outside of the US never just used .gov or .com.
To add a bit of context:
https://www.parliament.uk/ https://www.parliament.lk/
How do you reconcile both of these websites having .gov? You can't, you either need second level domains (.gov.uk,.gov.ik) or you would need one of them to change their name (parliamentsrilanka.gov)
.gov needs to be differentiated, and you need all of these country TLDs for that.