I paid 5 karma for making this comment. But if everyone in the subthread had to pay 5 karma, or if people below 1000 karma couldn't participate at all, then this thread would be much smaller. Comments of minor significance, like this one and others, would probably not exist. This ceteris paribus I would see as a loss.

I have taken at least 3 karma hits to talk about this.

or does it turn out that we're just incentivizing being quick on the trigger

Or worse, if someone wants to reply to a comment at -3, they will first upvote it to -2 just to avoid the penalty.

Meta-discussion is also a horrible slime-dripping cancer on a forum

Meta-discussion has to occur on fora if fora are going to function. It may be that non-functioning fora have more meta-discussion, but there are obvious correlation v. causation issues.

I agreed with this as a general principle strongly enough to pay a 5 karma penalty to say so. I don't think it should be as down voted as it is.

I can't recall having ever participated in a forum or blog and have the pay offs of meta-discussion be higher than discussing something else. More problematically it is way too engaging than it should be and is an attention sink.