Yes, what I was trying to articulate at the end was that the bot which finds urls to post only generated 3.7k karma after 1.5 months. Given additional time there's nothing stopping it from generating up to the 10k. I actually achieved the 10k with some additional manual posts rather than extend the bot or run it for additional time.

Well, you won your merit badge, thats the main thing. I can't help feeling using mechanical turk was logistically the same as buying the karma: you could have paid them to do things which either directly or almost directly earned you the score, not just grading inputs. But I don't mean to quibble: it was an interesting/entertaining read!

I think if you'd gone into an investment space, you might have earned the score faster by virtue of earning other people money from your picks.