I think the point being made is that the law is enforced selectively and with varying degrees of enthusiasm, to further the interests of specific political groups.
It's striking that someone as intelligent as the comment parent could not see this.
Saying "the US justice system seems only to protect the status quo because it vigorously enforces email leaks out of shady private spying companies while ignoring torture" doesn't imply that car theft should go unpunished at all.
But then, if you're an HN celebrity, you can probably count on being able to say anything and get upvoted, and then having anything said against you downvoted. You could test this by masking the username on a comment until after a vote, but HN would never do that because the people who could do that are all people that benefit from this effect, and the powerful never cede power. (I hope to be proven wrong, but cynicism is rarely wrong in the world where we live.)
I don't know why you're attributing motives for this phenomenon to me, because (a) I mostly agree with you, and (b) find it irritating, not satisfying.
(I mean, I agree that my comments will get upvoted much more quickly than yours no matter what I say, not that my comment above was so incoherent that it could only be upvoted out of bias).
The problem with masking usernames prior to votes is that it would make all comments anonymous, and spur a lot of pointless voting.
I'd much rather an HN flag that simply stopped awarding karma or, for that matter, comment scores above (say) 5 once a commenter crosses (say) 50k karma. Dan wouldn't even have to make it mandatory; he could just make it public whether or not you've opted-in to that "level playing field" feature. Most high-karma commenters would.
The top 10 commenter karma scores on the leaderboard were removed after I lobbied for it for months. I wish they'd extend it all the way down to that 50k threshold; at a certain point, you should just have "karma: lots" (like Slashdot used to) and no gradations between those users.
I'd still get bonus upvotes though, because there are people who more or less "subscribe" to my comments. Same thing with Patrick, George Grellas, and 'mechanical_fish. And, god willing, 'tzs.
Finally, believe me, my real professional circle is mostly made up of people who think very little of HN, and my karma here is not a source of "celebrity" for me, or at least, not in a good sense.
Saying "the US justice system seems only to protect the status quo because it vigorously enforces email leaks out of shady private spying companies while ignoring torture" doesn't imply that car theft should go unpunished at all.
But then, if you're an HN celebrity, you can probably count on being able to say anything and get upvoted, and then having anything said against you downvoted. You could test this by masking the username on a comment until after a vote, but HN would never do that because the people who could do that are all people that benefit from this effect, and the powerful never cede power. (I hope to be proven wrong, but cynicism is rarely wrong in the world where we live.)