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.