I was thinking, would it be better if the ability to submit designs in a cartel/clan was made into a priv that could be added to a clan position, as opposed to a TM only thing? I'm not entirely sure how this would affect the TM position itself, but I was hoping this would get other people to add to it and suggest better options.

How about having TM abilities be an actual priv, except submission/return/trash, where that would be a second ability. The leader of the cartel would have all of the TM abilities then, and there could be a council of designers for the cartel instead of one dictator.

Or the cartel leader would just be the TM period, since the problem of inactive TM's would be solved by making design submission a priv