Dare Obasanjo cuts through a lot of the hype and complaints about whether posters/linkers (vis-a-vis Jason Calacanis and Digg) should get paid or not. In any popular field, there's always a market for professionals; the people who think that's somehow distasteful should just give away the tools they sell, and see how that works out for them. The more interesting thing is how Dare sums up:

The interesting question for me is whether sites like Digg are immune to the 1% rule or not. When I used to participate on Kuro5hin it was clear to me that a small set of users determined the focus of the site even though there were thousands of users who could vote on stories and rate comments. It was also easy to see how the direction and the topics covered by the site would change as certain cliques of users left the site. Digg looks to me to be just like Kuro5hin with a slightly better UI and a different community. I would be surprised if both sites don't face the same kind of issues when it comes to small sets of users dominating the content and focus of the site despite Kevin Rose's protestations that this isn't the case. 

Rose can protest all he wants, it's just human nature at work. You can see it on USENET groups, in mailing lists, on Wikis, blog commenters, etc. I suspect that if you asked a local politician whether they get a disproportionate number of calls from a small number of people, they would say yes. The fact of the matter is, most people in any community just lurk. Trying to claim otherwise is like spitting into the wind.