Agree with the self-voting thing. Steem is like a bank account with interest on your savings, only with Steem you are able to do interesting new things with that interest and if you're inactive socially you don't receive your interest. When we fund an account we receive a certain amount of votes in relation to how much of the network we bought. We paid for those votes, we are entitled to them, regardless how we choose to use them.
This is why I am so against flagging. You paid for your votes and others have the power to mute your votes that you paid to have. This is terrible.
Interest rates in banks are all the same.
You are referring more to share market. Unfortunately most whales tend to wreck the market with huge withdrawals.
I believe from most of the comments here, they are mostly money driven and ROI instead of community platform view for Steemit.
Best regards
Daily Bread Food Bank.