Ask HN: Why are Rock Star banalities worth so much karma-love?

Today I witnessed a rather trivial exchange between two rock star personalities on this forum. It went something like this:

254 points by Rock Star #1 20 minutes ago Facebook is soo not worth 40 billion.

311 points by Rock Star #2 15 minutes ago Dude, you're just jealous. They make more money than your company. And you don't know how to valuate stock right. The secondary market values them that way.

186 points by Rockstar #2 7 minutes ago Dude, get your facts straight. I do too know how to valuate stocks. You're the one who doesn't know what you're talking about. Facebook is is so not worth that much money.

29 points by anonymouseketeer I wonder what pg would say

12,348 by pg It all depends

I mean, seriously, I don't take this place as seriously as some of you but wouldn't comment value by karma be more relevant if there were a fixed amount of karma members could use in any given day?

What if karma was needed to post? What if you only had 10 karma a day?

Would everybody rush to add their two karma points to the already meaningless total if doing so meant they couldn't congradulate their friends announcement of their site launch that day?

Prediction: this comment/post will get like a negative 5 or so ... but then things will heat up if a rock star personality comes along to post something like, "You're just jealous", after which their karma will go up by like 300 or something, after which the first 10 people who post "I agree" will also feed off the karma crumbs.

Go ahead and send me into the anti-karma universe fanboys! At least I'm thinking of ways to improve this experience instead of lurking for posts by popular people to post "I agree" to up my points.