but the problem with so-called "excessive" self voting is that it's against a primary aim of Steemit,
Those who only vote for themselves will receive less support from others so to me self voting is a bad strategy if you are active in the community and want to connect with people. @haejin used to vote all comments in his posts for this very reason, he knows that voting for other is ultimately the strategy that will pay off in the long run.
What really hurts the platform is not letting users use their SP as they wish, it reduces demand for steem.
No one is stopping @haejin from voting how they want. No one can stop anyone. People do however down vote @haejin, so really what you're getting at is a critique of flagging?
It's not clear if you're saying we shouldn't espouse what you consider to be anti-capitalist concepts in posts / comments or if we need to either voluntarily stop flagging or remove the feature from the system. Am I getting warmer?