I tend to agree with your point about auto-voting and curation trails. However, I only auto-vote people I know produce quality content. I don't give those out willy-nilly. The curation trails are another story. I have joined a few, but I notice my power diminishes quite quickly, especially if I am engaging organically as well. Another issue I have found is that I end up self voting just because I get up voted by one of the trails I am on. I'm not a huge fan of self voting, so this irks me a bit.
I must add that I am not completely against self-voting either. I used to be completely against it, before I realized that sometimes it is necessary. So if I've put considerable effort into a post, and it doesn't get upvotes, I don't see why I should not help the post.
After all, if you are willing to pay $2 for someone elses post, you should apply the same principle to your own work.
If you do not appreciate your own work, why should others?
I saw self votes akin to dividends on a stock. IOW I am earning on my stake. In the very early days of Steemit, there was considerable debate about self voting your own posts AND even comments. I thought back then it was more or less resolved that self voting posts was ok but not self voting comments...kind of a compromise. Sadly many people from back then are no longer even active anymore. Anyways, it seems currently the whales have decided against self voting period.
Likely depends on how large your vote is. Not in percentage, but in actual reward size.
That's a good point. I haven't thought of it that way.
You can tell Hive.vote not to self-vote, I believe.