You can look at my blog and see me upvoting all of my posts myself. Me not liking it doesn't stop it from being profitable and I will never give anyone crap for doing it.
That being said, it should just not be a thing. Upvoting yourself should just not be possible in any way. Especially among users with a lot of steempower, you see how they high-five themselves and end up being the highest contributors to their post pay out while also taking a huge chunk out of the curation reward pool for said post. It's a system that defeats itself for the sake of helping the author when systems that help in doing so are already in place.
I do agree 100% with what you are saying. Hopefully changes will come that involve that to some degree.