On the blockchain, communities have a numerical identifier - so no name squatting issue.

I think you are operating under the assumption that communities are exactly like tribes, but, they are actually very different products.

> and with tribes, communities are actually an inferior product.

That is a bold statement when talking about a product that hasn't been released yet. With communities having moderation features, I don't believe that it is anywhere close to being an inferior product. It's more like the next evolution of how we do social media on a blockchain without everyone being in the same big 'bucket'. It's also quite possibly an excellent solution for content discovery which is currently a challenge with all of the focus on a global 'trending' page which tends to often be overrun by the same topic (Steem and Steemit) even with 'honest' voting being much more common after HF21/22. Being able to subscribe to communities/topics that you like to regularly see is quite a powerful feature.

However, communities could certainly be used in the way that tribes are used by running a custom interface along with their own token, but, that likely won't be the most common application for them. Running your own interface and token could be likened to 'running a business' as you have explained and using them in this way would certainly come with additional infrastructure and operating costs, just like tribes do.

How much does it cost to make a subreddit? 🙂

Thank you for your feedback and this post - I appreciate the passion and care in regards to new developments on the Steem blockchain.