I agree with most parts of your article (resteemed) and fully understand your feelings. I always upvote comments on my articles (if at least they upvoted my article, too - not because of the money - most upvotes aren't worth much money anyway, but as I consider it as a symbolic gesture).
I don't agree with the selfvoting part, because in my opinion in the long run it is bad for interaction and communication between users. In addition one (not the only!) motivation to write good articles decreases. Check this out for example:

Many minimalistic no-text-posts per day where every of them brings the author about 30 dollar, that means several hundred dollar per day just earned by self-voting. Of course I could do the same ... others may follow. And it is even worse since HF 19 as every 100 % vote has a fourfold higher impact than before.
I fully agree with the trending page again: there is kind of an 'exclusive club' upvoting each other and expecting upvotes in return from their 'colleagues' instead to reserve more votes for smaller accounts. But also the newbies are to 'blame' (this word is too strong, I know) as most of the time they either vote the trending posts or themselves. As I said, normally I support every commenter on my articles, but if I am aware that he upvotes his own comment, but not my "great, nice and wonderful" article, then - sorry - I will not upvote him, too. https://steemit.com/@sandrino

In case you are interested, you can read my article about HF 19 and it's consequences here (please don't upvote it, as it is too old already).