The rules are just social and economic. The wisdom of the crowd.
There are some elements that leave you with a bad feeling but I have been amazed at the evolution of systems of checks and balances. @curie and @cheetah are good examples. What has been created here is an amazing platform that is self governing and evolving day by day. It's truly remarkable.
Self voting is very short term thinking. Short term profit. If people put time into this platform and promote valuable content the potential for profit is much greater.
Just to clarify I am only referring to self voting for content that adds little value to the platform. Self voting as a means of promotion of one's work, especially by minnows should be encouraged.
How do you judge what adds value to the platform, We all like to read different things. I am more interested in art and homesteading and other like reading about steemit metrics. Or would you think of self governing inside of each community.
I would say any content adds value; interactions, building communities. Anything that is created. It doesn't matter the topic. Even using the steem blockchain to store encrypted messages adds value.
The governing is just an economic and social incentive to keep adding to the community.
Extracting value would be using content in some way and also extracting economic value from the system by converting to fiat.
To be clear I am not against that either unless someone is taking advantage at others expense.