This could do a lot more harm than good: spambots, or even worse, recruiters.
Not saying it couldn't be done right, but it might be involved and go against the HN minimalist philosphy.
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A "pm" could be implemented as a comment that only the recipient could see. It wouldn't necessarily require changes to the UI, maybe just another "private" comment state alongside "public" and the various "dead" states.
Although without a notification system (which would require changes to the UI) it would also probably be useless. Even without notifications, a link similar to the current "saved" link could lead to a list of pm comments.