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by sbashyal 4140 days ago
The effect "High karma can give you a little boost" is not due to HN karma itself. Many contributors to HN already have a reputation for good content and thus people are more likely to read/vote new submissions from them. So the boost is earned by the contributors by having impressed HN audience, not granted by HN solely based on past karma.
1 comments

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect

We've been studying this in a Sociology class, and this seems like a good example.