Gives you an opportunity to practice another buddhist/zen concept: letting go

It's no good if you're of a competitive nature though, which I believe to be an essential trait if you want to do startups.

You don't see many buddhist monks creating successful businesses.

Some might consider that a good thing. I respect the karma of who has gained a lot of Karma in 2009 a lot more than people from previous, when HN was smaller and points were easier to get.

Points seem easier to get now than back then. There are more upvoters.

I think it's easier to lose karma now becuase there are more people who disagree by downvoting a la reddit (see my comment above for a prime example).

But it really feels like people are more stingy with upvotes, especially at the story level. Gone are the days of nickb getting ~1k upvotes from a single submitted story over and over, now it's a much more reserved upvote culture where you have to submit a lot more material and interact more to get those big numbers.

I disagree. I think it's much easier to earn karma now that the HN community is much larger and diverse than when it was smaller. It's simple math; even if only 0.1% of HN members will upvote your post, you'll get votes much more quickly with 15,000 users (15 votes) versus 2000 users (2 votes).