[chunkybacon]

It will make HN worse if there is no corrective, but a corrective could be to further devalue the upvotes of people with little or no karma. To implement this you would need to further differentiate between displayed points and true points or change displayed points to one of the suggestions received before for the point display on comments (e.g. gradations of color/hue instead of numbers).

This hidden valuation will probably also have to exist for user karma. Curiously, this is what is claimed in many esoteric schools concerning karma itself. The mechanisms are deliberately hidden "by the gods" so that one does good for the sake of good and not with any intent of gaming the system.