You are wrong on so many levels. HN IS the ad. The whole point of HN is to push VC narratives and "Greed is good" style things onto nerds and less-nerdy but more business hungry folks. It's not meant to generate any revenue at all, it's a marketing funnel.
Moderation is pretty much JUST dang.
HN DOES have competitors, lobste.rs is pretty much directly competing, and more importantly, this very concept of "simple board to post links and comment" was borrowed to build freaking REDDIT
I know it might be hard to believe, but I assure you it's not the point of HN to push "VC narratives" or "greed is good". The strategy is much simpler and has a bunch of nice properties, one being that it works even better if you tell people what it is. It's simply to keep the community interested and happy. That's not easy, but it's the way to maximize HN's value—even if you look at it in the most self-interested way from YC's point of view.
Moderation is pretty much JUST dang.
HN DOES have competitors, lobste.rs is pretty much directly competing, and more importantly, this very concept of "simple board to post links and comment" was borrowed to build freaking REDDIT