Hopefully you're not suggesting that it actually be worth money. That's ridiculous. If you mean what if it worked like money that might be interesting but I dou

Hopefully you're not suggesting that it actually be worth money. That's ridiculous. If you mean what if it worked like money that might be interesting but I doubt it would be helpful. What problem would that solve? How would that even be realistic the way you describe? This doesn't make any sense at all and here's why: If karma is worth money then where does the initial money come from? Does PG give everyone 1500 to start like it's Monopoly? Do you put up the money yourself? Assuming you put up your own money it just isn't fair. The richest of us get more influence and the poor get none. It'll actually work a lot like the real US economy. Then, if karma is worth money then wouldnt it make sense to be able to withdraw it and use it in places other than HN? So what if you get people hoarding karma then they withdraw it all and end up with one. Imagine some of the very well respected people here suddenly having no karma at all because they withdrew it and spend it on a new computer. It's just not realistic and it defeats the whole purpose of karma. If it's only good on HN then it isn't worth money. The way it works now is probably the fairest way possible. If karma is one measure of the quality of a user's contributions and how much respect they have earned then making karma work like money would totally undermine its value. Right now, karma is earned. In a money scenario there are more chances to game the system and skew it both positively and negatively for a user. If you want to give someone money then check out their profile and see if you can either donate to one of their projects through PayPal or Flattr or something or you can just send an email and ask.