I think you're absolutely correct in your comment regarding the cause of self votes. Imma upvote it even though my VP has dipped below 80%, and now I'll have to wait longer before it recharges and I can vote again, because HF19.

An issue is that the Steem premined yet constitutes the majority. This Steem isn't being used to curate, and isn't causing Steemit to grow by rewarding content creators. This leaves open the question of whether Steemit was ever intended to actually attain the goals publicly claimed for it, or whether there were other motives that may have been cryptically held by the devs.

It simply may be impossible for Steemit to transition into a platform that does efficiently reward authors without the Steem held by @dan, @freedom, and other whales being invested in that process.