I think the poster makes a good point. In the early days of SO, as in any QA site, there were a surplus of questions and a dearth of answers. It would've been suicidal to obstruct people from providing answers, so the bar was set low there. Comments on the other hand are less valuable early on, so there was no reason to encourage them.
Fast forward to today, and now there are a critical mass of people willing---even eager---to answer questions, so that every new question has a surplus of answers, many of them wrong. SO might well improve their signal/noise ratio by reversing their policy and requiring higher karma for answers than they do for commenting. As the poster points out, a newb is unlikely to come up with an answer not already posted, but nonetheless might have some unique experience or insight on that answer that could be helpful.
Fast forward to today, and now there are a critical mass of people willing---even eager---to answer questions, so that every new question has a surplus of answers, many of them wrong. SO might well improve their signal/noise ratio by reversing their policy and requiring higher karma for answers than they do for commenting. As the poster points out, a newb is unlikely to come up with an answer not already posted, but nonetheless might have some unique experience or insight on that answer that could be helpful.