From what I've heard, in hacker news, as in other sites with a similar mechanism such as reddit, there are said to be systems in place to try to detect voting rings and not count those votes.
Of course, I doubt these systems are even close to perfect, but it is probably good to keep in mind that there is at least an attempt to reduce that problem.
Regarding the name "karma", that has become a standard term for these sorts of reputation point systems. The term did not originate with HN. That doesn't mean it is beyond criticism or anything, but HN wasn't the first site to use the term that way.
Now, I'll agree that there are some significant problems in "startup culture", but I don't think "cult" is a great description.
It's not like there is some doctrine that everyone here "has to" subscribe to or anything. Iirc I've seen some criticisms of the culture be treated fairly well.
However, that's not to say that things don't get downvoted. There are some fairly strong norms here about the style of commenting. (Speaking of, the norm here is generally against using "U" for "you".)
Also, even expressed in the best of ways, some ideas are still quite unpopular, and sometimes maybe not for good reason.
Perhaps one of these could be responsible for the response you got for what you said about high tech jobs for people over 40?
You say that getting money from a VC to start a business is not real entrepreneurship. I think that depends what one means by entrepreneurship.
If entrepreneurship is a self funded business endeavor, then indeed not.
If entrepreneurship is attempting to create a novel business, then it seems like it would be.
If neither of these definitions capture the meaning of "entrepreneurship", then idk.
It seems valid to me to be working to develop a product and to be motivated more by the product existing and getting profit than to be motivated by having end control of the product?
But I am sympathetic to some skepticism about VC funding stuff.
In case you are curious, iirc, most of the source code for HN is available, and is written in a lisp dialect called Arc, which is by Paul Graham (user pg) (some of it is private though.)
I don't know, I think this at least responds to much of what you say. I hope you find it to be at least a respectful response, even if it doesn't fully address your concerns.