Will this undermine most of what makes IAmA special? Probably. But Reddit leadership has all the funds they need to hire people to perform those extra tasks we formerly undertook as volunteer moderators, and we’d be happy to collaborate with them if they choose to do so.
So, “we’ll still do some work for free, but not as much”? I can’t see Reddit caring about this ho hum response, and if they do notice it has a negative impact on the sub they’ll just replace them.
Scorched earth is the only way that moderators can exercise any real power at this point. Anything else is just impotent.