It's important to remember that Hacker News is not a democracy. There isn't a voting system so people can democratically decide what content is good or bad. Rather, Hacker News is a dictatorship, controlled by Paul Graham and the Y Combinator. Within this space, the Y Combinator has absolute control over all content.
In a democratic system like Reddit, there might be objections to changing the titles or shadowbanning trolls (reddit does shadowban, but mods can't shadowban people for disturbing the quality of a subreddit). On Hacker News, these features are welcomed because they raise the quality of discourse.
Your only choice when it comes to hacker news is to stay and be a productive member, or leave. You are free to leave. Nobody is forcing you to stay here. The source code for Hacker News is even publicly available; if you want to make Joker News you're free to do so.
In this way, Hacker News circumvents tyranny of the majority in favor of quality of content. (I suspect that it also has to do with the Y Combinator's libertarian politics -- Hacker News is an excellent example of what the world could be like it if were organized into voluntary units with absolute internal control, but free choice and movement between those units.)
