On: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?

[AjJi]

AFAIK, SE mods are not picked based on karma, you can nominate yourself to be mod, and users will vote according to many indicators, not karma only.

Elections: http://stackoverflow.com/election

[m_myers → AjJi]

While this is correct, I think his complaint is about the privileges that high-reputation users get. Most moderation is done by ordinary users, not by elected moderators.

[gouranga → m_myers]

Your assumption is correct.

[pnathan → AjJi]

That's not strictly true.

Full moderators are elected... but high-rep users take on a ton of moderation tasks.