Interesting perspective. I think you mean someone is given, say, $100 and told to give $75 away and keep $25 but instead they are keeping the full $100? I guess that does make sense.

Not sure there's a way to stop it, but here's an idea: what if the steemit interface gave a visual indication of self-voted comments (red background maybe?) so people would know more clearly who votes themselves up regularly. Might that change anything or bring about some social shaming if the community feels it's not a good activity?

Might be interesting.