[flagged]
What I can tell you is that the answer almost certainly boils down to:
(1) we can't moderate what we don't see, so yes - the standards get applied inconsistently, and
(2) Passionate ideologues of every flavor are convinced that we secretly let the other side off easier. The actual dynamics are random but everybody overinterprets the randomness—always in the same direction: the mods are against me. The mods are not against you.
An obvious place to start would be deeply nested sub-threads with a low # of participants like this one, which was eventually pruned by being flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33225480
I don't feel you're 'against me', because I didn't have any participation in the thread at the time most of the discussion took place, and in any case it's been years since you shut down any of my comments.
What perplexes me is how a subthread like the one above (which got pretty snarky) was allowed to evolve without interference, whereas you acted quickly to chastise a person who made a single comment that didn't kick off a flamewar, and wasn't directed at any HN user or group of people.
Certainly nobody has the time, will, or desire to read every comment, but it's easy to observe the structure of a thread in diagrammatic form and see behavioral signals emerging before getting to any of the textual content.
Simple solution is not to print money. Capitalism is not the problem.
Downvote it all you want, money printing is the issue - not “capitalism”. Sound money eliminates this problem.
Commodity and housing prices have had steep price increases well before central banks printed money excessively.