This is truly a gem of a post, and I just couldn't agree more with you. Im kinda new in steemit (45 days), I join here because it looks fun and interesting to be part of. I love to write, I love photography, and here I found a place to mix both of them. I have some stories to tell, and try to make always 100% original content, I even try to post daily, in two languages. And after doing this, games one of the parts I enjoy the most, that is reading and try to learn more and more about what I'm interested. I start to read about crypto a couple of weeks ago, since I start "playing" on bittrex, and try to read as much as I can here on steemit. And as you said, a lot of people are writing and no one seems to be reading, and the problem is the big gap in between the potential profits as an author and as a curator. That only means that a lot of people are here because of their own interest, and just trying to make some profits from here, most of the people didn't want to read, or are too focused on the authors part. I don't have an idea to solve this problem, the self vote as you said should be forbidden, and also it could help that more people with high voting weight help the real readers to make their own vote worth more, it could level up the SP for some of the people who are actually willing to spend time finding and upvoting a good post.