To me it feels like shareholders that are only interested in accumulating shares at the expense of their own company
This is the money quote. 100% agreed here.
The interesting thing I was realizing though in my discussion with @tcpolymath was that the % stake is by default decreasing over time, and it may be why they have this mentality, not sure.
Concerning 1a1v, I only think it's an interesting setup that is more directly tied to engagement value of post, but it does raise concerns about what value staking has. Your idea seems interesting, I'll have to ponder about it a bit... Thanks for the reference!
Except Steem is a currency, not an ownership token. There are no investors and no company in that sense. Every investment here, every company here, is an individual, independent account or collection of accounts investing in itself with Steem. Nobody except Steem Inc.'s ownership is investing in Steem, and even they're a little fuzzy about it. Absolutely none of us have any fiduciary responsibility to Steem, if it could even be identified as an entity.
Self-voting in that sense is a choice to reinvest in your own company rather than spending that money on marketing. Maybe that last comparison is stretching the metaphor a little, but outgoing votes are actually way better marketing than any number of posts bought into Trending. The vote-buy-as-promotion thing is pretty much a myth.
But there's a weird thing about having Vests as our core resource where reinvesting in them now can boost our marketing budget later. So I see a huge distinction between self-voting to power up and support later plans, and self-voting to cash out.
Shareholders vote on the direction of the company, and analogously, we as participants on the Steem blockchain vote in ways that influence the currency/platform (stretching a bit).
It's an interesting way to look at self voting, but if one is already giving out going votes and networking, is there a need to self vote given that others will likely reciprocate?
Though I would certainly prefer a self voter that gives back to the community than one that is just sitting on one's own throne, that's for sure.
This is a very good point, it's certainly better. But I do think that promoting to trending as exposure still works. It's something I have been thinking about recently... Instead of what we see on trending, is it worth pooling resources to send what we would like to see up there?
At the moment there's still the timing issue which makes a self-vote more powerful since it comes quicker. If HF20 does away with that I plan to stop voting on my own posts. I'll still buy votes as long as it's a more efficient way of getting SP than powering up, though.
My feeling is that optimal Trending strategy involves either ignoring it or trying to replace it with a better concept. Ignoring it is optimal strategy on every other platform, so it seems like it should be here, too.