It is an awful lot like buying karma, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. If people really want karma so much, why not let them buy it? They are the ones creating the monetary value here. Don't most people here think that karma is unimportant anyways?

I doubt that karma will regularly be given out for donations if karma transfers become popular here. I was just hoping to draw out two or three people to donate and make this post more interesting by linking it up with an existing meme.

For Less Wrong karma to eventually be worth something as part of a reputational economy, there is no way around allowing wealth transfers between karma and real world currency/services. Doing this in a way that scales to the globalist level while not being subject to anything like the USA PATRIOT Act is an unsolved problem.

So the Top Contributors section remains meaningful, we could separate that ranking list from a list for most karma.