What? No, the "entrenched organization" that regulates voting rings exists to keep HN from turning into a morass of marketing puff. The quality of the submissions and comments are literally the only thing of value here.
You can do that by restricting voting to established users with nonzero karma, which HN already does. If a bunch of people who are providing the high-quality submissions and comments say a particular submission is high-quality, what are the grounds for doubting them?
It is not difficult to farm accounts for voting rings, and there is a significant financial incentive to do so. It's true that there may be some false positives, but without these protections the floodgates would be opened to startup marketing goons.
