But there are vastly more important factors. One is that there are other moderators. They just don't post publicly.
By far the most important is HN's community. We have so many dedicated users who care about the quality of this place, and they send a steady stream of heads-ups about things we need to look at*. That's the reason for your "god mod" impression—it would be impossible for one person, or even a team, to see all these things, but what I'm actually looking at are things that other people have seen and are bringing to our/my attention, whether by flagging them or by emailing hn@ycombinator.com. So it's a "given enough eyeballs" thing.
We can always use more such help, so if you (or anyone) notice something that we should probably be looking at, please flag it and/or email hn@ycombinator.com. We usually can look at it pretty quickly—though it may take me longer to reply and my worst-case latency is shameful.
* For example, I've got 3 or 4 emails at present asking about why "I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again" (https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=mataroa.blog) has been posted 14 times and keeps getting flagged. Yeah, that's probably something we should look at.