Philosophically I would imagine you would implicitly upvote your own submission, hence it makes sense to start at 1. Alternatively, it could be seen as two tra

Philosophically I would imagine you would implicitly upvote your own submission, hence it makes sense to start at 1. Alternatively, it could be seen as two transactions: -1 posting an article costs 1 karma +1 upvoting your own article costs 1 karma