I can understand why some people on Digg or even on this site are questioning the ethics behind Arn's decision.
In order to understand the animosity (which is misplaced, as I'll detail later) one must understand what goes into making a doctor. There are many people who would be excellent physicians who cannot get into U.S. medical school. This is borne out not just by personal experience - I knew people that fit the bill but didn't get in - but by academic studies of MCAT score correlation with eventual performance. In 2007, there were 42315 applications for 17759 spots in American MD schools. In addition, (American) society spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on each physician that completes residency/fellowship - medical school costs more than tuition, and Medicare funds residencies. So, every physician that leaves the field does indeed remove a physician from society at a time of physician shortage, take a spot from someone else who would've been a good physician, and cost society hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thus, the decision to leave the field should not be done lightly.
However, we're not talking about someone who left clinical practice to go sell penis-enlargement kits or market a weight-loss product. He's pursuing a dream. And hopefully, if successful, he'll share some of the profits with the medical education system so that someone else can be trained.
As for paying the mods - I think anyone that shared in Arn's financial risk (paying for servers, computer maintenance/bandwidth, maintaining relationships with advertisers, etc.) should share in the reward. But paying someone for being a moderator? There's no such obligation. There are non-financial rewards for being a more influential member of a cyber-community, and one can take it or leave it. I'm contributing to the value of the site by being a member, giving what I hope are insightful posts, and reading the bulletins (thereby being a member of the audience for advertisers). However, I certainly don't expect to be rewarded for my participation.
Good luck to Arn. And, if you're being offered 8 figures for a site which nets you only 6 figures, by all means sell. I saw too many people offered large sums for their e-businesses in the late 90's, who declined, only to go bankrupt.
Dave
