Meh, I know tons of whales who are charitable with their stake. I think that I'm rather charitable when I have the option to simply pay myself in lieu of rewarding random people for posting blogs that don't really return the favor. I understand that, that is what makes things tick here, which is why I do it, but you're always gonna have your greedy folks. We're human, just civilized animals, and if we can pay ourselves, we're gonna do it.
For example, the last 30 days, I've cast ~325 votes. 1 vote was given to myself at 50%, which was just to mitigate a flag that a butthurt user gave me.
I sell my idle vote power on Smart Steem so that my idle VP will be at the disposal of the community if they'd like to buy it, but otherwise, I give. I keep my vote settings at "Only vote if your VP is 99% or above."