And karma should only be from comments. I don't understand why someone has downvoting power just because they stumbled across and posted a popular story on HN.

Like the guy who submitted the story for Steve Job's death, now has over 1k karma simply from posting a link to apple.com at the right time, and from nothing else. How does that qualify him to downvote over me, who has been thoughtfully posting comments here and there for nearly a year now?

I'm not really that concerned. I don't care about karma, really. I just think it's a very stupid system.

I agree the system is flawed here. I think Stack Exchange solves this problem nicely with their daily 200 point cap. This way it forces you to make a time investment in addition to posting quality content.