I don't see any problem with self-voting. I see even some of the biggest critics have come around to this idea. Indeed, very obviously, it's an important driver for Steem Power demand. If this network were to thrive, advertisers would throw in millions to get their posts up top. Neither do I see an issue with linear rewards. Where I do have an issue, though, is the current vote power reserve rate. A target of 10 votes per day is simply not enough, and an overwhelming deterrent for curators to significantly downscale or indefinitely halt curation activities. It's forced me and several other engaged curators to give up on active curation. It also encourages people to save voting power while voting on others, so they can vote for themselves with the precious 100% strength vote.

Anyway, all of this has been discussed time and time again, before and after the hardfork 19.

When I first joined here, I suggested downvote rewards. Fighting abuse is an important function that should be incentivized - particularly if the same post is then downvoted by others. Yes, I'm aware there's revenge downvoting or spiteful downvoting, but I see that as no different from self-upvoting. Besides, they would continue downvoting irrespective of anything. There's also the issue that the most abusive posts will be downvoted to $0; so where's the rewards generated then? Just a thought experiment. Either way, there should be some incentive for people to form abuse fighting groups.

Communities will solve a lot of issues, but there's still the un-communitied posts and comments that are open to rampant self-voting.