I think the quorum is set so low because there is a suspicion that a large number of people will buy into these schemes and lose the keys somewhere. They certainly won't be looking at day to day operations of it.

If that were to happen, and the quorum were higher, then no changes could be made.

But that's just an admission that the whole thing is going to be ran by a small unaccountable group that gets to decide everything. Direct Democratic governance can't function without high voter turn-out. If the system is set up assuming low voter turnout, it means the notion of there being democratic governance is a sham to begin with.

A system where the people who don't want to be involved in the day-to-day operations elect representatives to protect their interests would be a more appropriate fit here.

Perhaps think of it more like voting in a public company, where the small shareholders votes basically doesn't matter.

Of course, the large shareholders are all people who created the company, early employees, and early investors in the first place.

So yeah, there's the illusion that votes from all shareholders matter, but if a company required even 30% of shareholders to vote to make changes, nothing will ever get done unless a few holders comprise that 30%

What matters isn't percent of shareholders it's percent of shares voted. I'd find it very unusual if a company only required 1% of shares to be voted to reach quorum.

With DAOs governance tokens are basically shares, so why does 1% make sense there?

Companies work fine asking for more than 30% of shares getting counted. You said shareholders. Which is unimportant and not a thing for companies. The point stands then these sorts of DAOs are beyond silly

If you ever been in a DAO, you would know vast majority of people including whales don't bother to vote at all even if you personally spam them to vote on matters that impact them.

Which is how many DAOs don't require many votes to pass as the limit gets lower until they are able to reach a conclusion at all.

Not lose the keys just unaware of the vote. There are no push notifications, and every project has a ton of stuff going on.

Come on now, why not take attendance every few months and run an actual quorum on that?

Because a lack of participation is common from holders.