If a new account can neither upvote nor downvote, then wouldn't it be a catch 22 where no one ever gains any karma? Also as someone else pointed out, people oft

If a new account can neither upvote nor downvote, then wouldn't it be a catch 22 where no one ever gains any karma? Also as someone else pointed out, people often downvote for political purposes whereas the only reason I can think of someone abusing upvotes would be for spam which gets handled by HN's filters pretty well.