This is a really good post and topic that should be talked about more.
I don't pay much attention to the self-voting anymore. I just stopped thinking about it because as a minnow i feel that it is not in my power to step into this ... All i can do with it is step on someone's nerve and wait for him to release his anger on me. So it's just not worth it ... Imagine you are trying to get your posts some quality upvotes for a few bucks reward that can be taken away with a single downvote from a person you step on their nerve.
Self voting comments should be disabled, but this won't stop those who want to continue with up votes. They can create a new account and upvote their posts from that account :) So if the developers want to stop this (if) than they will have to come up with a good strategy!