hi Alan, all
Alan, I think you might accidentally have gotten yourself into one of those horrible downward spirals of concern here. So I offer my more optimistic take.
The creation of unincorporated associations for the purpose of giving members the legal personality they need would have bearing only on the role of the SOs and ACs *as members* (or designators - it's advantageous for designators to have this legal personality, too).
Because the rights we want these "members" to have are / would be very clear, it will be relatively simple to make sure these unincorporated associations are minimalist in every way. The component people/organisations in the SOs and ACs would only act through the associations in order to exercise those membership rights.
Those associations would be the "persons". They are arms length from ICANN. The fact that the people who populate them are also populating internal ICANN structures has no bearing on that personhood.
In every other way for all the usual business of ICANN, things would be as they are now. If ICANN were to fundamentally restructure the SOs and ACs, or even just one of them, it would as part of that process have also to change the membership rules to define the new "XNSO" as a member, and refer to the association involved (which would just be another part of establishing it). That just adds a pretty simple, low-key process to the (very complex, no doubt) process of changing an SO or AC.
The critical point is that you are wrong where you say "we take these entities and make them Members". No. We would be asking the people and entities that populate those ICANN bodies (which aren't entities) and giving them the chance to exercise their designators or members powers through these associations.
That is - under the package of reforms we are proposing, such associations would be the vehicle for the community to exercise power over the corporation, as part of the membership and designator form. Not anything else.