...is one I expect - as soon as a territory is almost profitable, it will get a competitor, and another, and another, where we'll have (for instance) ~dogAndCats, ~dogNcats, ~doggoCats, and ~CatsAndDogs. There is no way for a territory to differentiate itself, intrinsically to SN. The only way I can think of to defend against this, is to add more resources to build a 2nd-channel off of SN, to figure out a way to capture the audience. And that will be the demise of SN. They are actually incentivizing off-SN audience-capture. And yet, as a territory owner, I have no plans for anything like that, and I'm still irrationally paying the monthly bill. So perhaps I'm wrong. That's a low-time-preference game to come ahead while your customers don't. You'll get churn, with the exception of irrational people like me. The real way to victory for SN, is to figure out a way for all stakeholders, (SN, Territory Owners, Contributors, Posters, and Commenters) to all come ahead, on average. The average member in each of those cohorts needs to be in the black.

Right now, SN has determined a bunch of arbitrary fixed constants. They've done this for subjective reasons in a centrally planned way. That is like setting a price in a market without feedback, and then only selling to the people willing to pay that price. It doesn't maximize total trade, which is what produces the most winners. In order for all stakeholders to win, sustainably, they need to find the optimal parameters, which, confusingly, will fluctuate with time. In free markets, prices float. Everything about a territory needs to be parametrized and controllable by the Territory. SN needs to convert all their fees into a single fixed number, and let territories control the variable numbers. The territories would then experiment to find the equilibriums that balance post-cost, comment-cost, revenue-rake, etc.

Metaphorically, it's similar to states rights.