I think the biggest question has to be: Where does it leave Steemit if everyone only voted for their own content?
There might be more activity, as you need content to upvote but there is no incentive to make it worthy of reading.
Like many others, I'm torn about the whole thing. It's his stake - everyone here has one, regardless of its size.
Ultimately though, the value in this platform does not come from upvoting spam content. If it decends into that then we've played ourselves.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. A few people self-voting doesn't make a big impact. But when all of the discouraged newbies see how profitable self-voting spam is, they won't be motivated to improve their posts and engage with other users. Why work if you don't have to?
My fear is that the Steemit party is going to go from "super hot orgy" to " just a bunch of dudes masturbating" if we don't focus on the social aspect of this platform. We should discourage antisocial behavior, like farming self-votes.