I didn't mean "worth something" to imply a financial value. I meant it more as a gatekeeping mechanism to the serious discussions. Which is why there would need to be split between viral/entertainment karma and "serious" karma. And that would also be the fix for your concerns of "just talk" or harmful personalities dropping in.

I'm not terribly concerned with whether people catch this vision or not - the bigger point is that reddit needs their own vision.

Karma's not exactly a reliable measure of anything you'll want to base policy on. It's easy enough to game, and a large portion of it is just a measure of how present and non-contrarian you are. It isn't generally allocated to anyone for saying what needs to be said, but the same trivialities we don't like in normal politics. This is especially true in bigger, more diverse communities.

If I were the product manager, I'd simply reply to that issue with, "So we'll fix it."

Dismissing out new ideas because of problems with the current paradigm is non-productive. Identifying issues, and proposing solutions to those issue is how to make progress.

You can say "we'll fix it" to everything. That doesn't cause it to be fixed, though. I'm not dismissing the idea, I'm asking for a possible solution.

One possible solution is multi-tiered karma. The bottom tier would be the status quo, but the higher tiers require actual insights and productive discussion, and can only be granted by those who have already proven themselves to have the capability to carry out that level of dialogue. There may even be moderation for karma, to give rationale for up/down, with moderators verifying new users at each tier. At the end of it all, the amount of karma isn;t going to be very meaningful, but the tier you are allowed to participate in would give credibility to a small set of discussions, making them meaningful at a societal level.

But I want to be clear that I'm not pitching this idea in any way. This whole idea that I am discussing was literally ripped straight from a sci-fi novel. What I really want is to encourage people to come up with their own ideas, and not just look for minor improvements to reddit's existing site.

I want reddit's leadership to live up to the concept of being revolutionary, not evolutionary.