I think you know what you gain from having high karma. If you didn't, I doubt you would have felt compelled to earn your ~18,000 karma over the past 3 years.
I dunno that you could say that someone has "earned" something that's primarily the result of their spending some spare time in a community and usually behaving in a way that the community likes.
On this site you gain preference by the ranking algorithm, for one thing. Your comments and votes hold more weight. Outside of that, many people believe the karma makes the man and not the other way around. It can be an instant way to determine whether someone making a statement is qualified to make that statement. Of course that isn't how it should be, but that is how the human brain works until you've trained it otherwise. I've seen people with 10k karma make an ass of themselves and people with 30 karma divulge great insight, but the image is still there.
I would say on Hacker News you do more or less earn your karma. Since this community doesn't take too kindly to smart ass comments you are forced to conform to a higher standard than you find on other communities that give their users karma.
It's not perfect, but I do believe if you have high karma you have earned it (on Hacker News).
> Since this community doesn't take too kindly to smart ass comments you are forced to conform to a higher standard...
Assumptions in this statement:
1. Everyone always wants to make smart-ass comments.
2. Nobody wants to behave this way anyway.
3. Smart-ass comments are never rewarded here.
I don't think I agree with any of those. I behave here exactly the way I did on Reddit; I simply no longer spend any time on Reddit. Nor does the karma system here discourage me from saying anything or behaving in a particular way. At the most, I might withhold an opinion on something simply because I don't feel like it's worth defending. (I'm spending so much effort ranting about karma here because I'm hoping that maybe someone will read it later and consider doing something different in the next social whattathingamajig.)
I don't believe my statement made any of the assumptions you listed.
Not everyone wants to make smart-ass comments, but many do. This is more true with people outside our community (Redditers) than for people who have been part of this community for a while. Smart-ass comments are sometimes rewarded here and that is somewhat unfortunate. The general rule however is that they are not. You do not behave like your standard Redditer, and that might be why you no longer engage in discussion there.
Nevermind, carry on.