When the large social media personalities arrive, they'll have no problems dominating the earnings, self-voting or not.
When all your social relations arrive, the majority of voting will likely be guided by familial/tribal obligations.
By punishing the ability to self-vote, it removes, perhaps, the most powerful incentive for minnows not to cash out every penny they earn.
Having said that, I'm eager to see how your pet project unfolds!
She ain't touchin minnows. They are the future of the platform. However, the ability to self vote - @personz preliminary data gathered from the bot he is building (the kitty) shows that the majority of self votes are in fact high SP accounts!
The need to do something about this problem is pressing, because it is going to slow down adoption. We need the slider in condenser for all accounts, and we need 128kb blocks. Now. Neither are on-chain, no hardfork is required. One requires the witnesses to change their parameters, the other requires a tiny change in the code for steemit.com.
Familial voting is really not going to be a problem, but mostly people vote by affinity. The internet gives a sense of isolation that counters a lot of traditional obligations.
I am not an idol worshiper so I don't give a damn about celebrities or familial obligations or any of this shit. I use this expression extremely pointedly, also. A lot of people don't realise what a bunch of fetishists they are. Worshiping the nation, worshiping the ancestors, worshiping the relatives, worshiping the celebrities. It makes me sick.
I don't worship nobody but only wherever this entire universe came from. Everthing else is my Peer.