For everyone who have stuck with steem throughout the fall whilst the Bitcoin train went right up without taking steem with it, this seems only like a fair end of the year treat to the community.
I would not have anything against it, assuming the person is responsible also in what type of comments/posts they self-vote. I.e not leaving half empty comments saying "nice" or "cool" on posts or comments made by others that they don't even upvote, but then put their own comments to the top.
Also I think that this period of high SBD price is a good opportunity to reward the active members of the community in a way that can be good for the platform. As more new users come onto steem, having a larger number of users with 500+ STEEM that at least then makes for a few cents worth of upvotes means that there will be a higher correlation between the number of votes you get and the rewards. This will help offset a problem I see on steem where people don't care about the number of people they attract to their content, but only whether they can secure the auto-votes from a whale or two. This prior mindset has, in my mind, been very harmful for the organic growth of the platform, which is what any social platform needs.