ok, i'll get it for you:
from page 16
In order to give everyone an equal opportunity to get involved and earn the currency people must be given an opportunity to work. The challenge is how to judge the relative quality and quantity of work that individuals provide and to do so in a way that efficiently allocates rewards to millions of users. This requires the introduction of a scalable voting process. In particular it requires that authority to allocate funds must be as distributed and decentralized as possible.
I don't think the purely mechanical work of posting something, anything, just so you can vote it, is going be the kind of work we want people doing. It's too much like paying people to dig holes and fill them back in.
page 20:
Payout Distribution One of the primary goals of Steem’s reward system is to produce the best discussions on the internet. Each and every year 10% of the market capitalization of Steem is distributed to users submitting, voting on, and discussing content. At the size of Bitcoin this could be as much as $1.75 million doll...
"ONE OF THE PRIMARY GOALS" "PRODUCE THE BEST DISCUSSIONS ON THE INTERNET"...
I believe you can find somewhere in @dantheman's posts at least one that discusses the issue of self-voting, also.
I don't think the ability to 'curate' your own comment feeds ... well... I don't think this really has a value to everyone else, and really, it should not be you 'shaping' it, because you make the original, and you respond to comments. What value is there in you commenting on the original, for example? Shouldn't that be a post-script?
Here's what I'm reading in this --
I see nothing in there arguing against someone using their upvote strength to vote for themselves. I consider it advocating for the value of your own voice. If I'm going to take the time to write something, I want it to be at least worth one of my upvotes.
Do you have to impress anyone else to get a vote from yourself?
Does it really matter beyond an individuals own ethics ?
That is all very well and good, but your opinion about your own work means nothing in the context of 'quality' because quality requires other people, lots of other people, to make the same judgement. That's how Steem works, except in this respect.
free market dynamics > personal opinion
voting for yourself will never overcome that and I'm not claiming it will.
I dont care if people vote for their own work, simply put.
It's not about the bigger picture, just about raising the bar for exploitative behaviour from new users, so that the quality does not decline.
If I voted every one of my posts and comments with HF19, what do you think people would think of me, especially being I am operating a Witness?
well, you would burn through your voting power pretty quick and not be able to upvote others, but that is currently your prerogative.
you're begging the question that everyone upvoting their own content will necessarily decrease quality, and I don't think the two are directly correlated.
Theres a reason "upvote your post" is an default option on new posts but not new comments -- because most people would do that anyways.
also, a quick example -- i've made a few comments in different threads today that I upvoted a small percentage just to push it to the top of the comment pile. Why? Because I want more people to see my comment. That's perfectly within my prerogative and my voting power reflects that.