Here's the thing though: nothing can restrict anything on Steemit, except a code change. Everyone is free to vote as they wish, either up or down, and no one - NO ONE - can restrict them.
Some people do listen to arguments, and respond to flags, and they change their behavior, but it's up to them to do it.
It sounds like what you're really against is argument-based social pressure but that is a fact of a social network. People don't have to listen to it. @haejin and @berniesanders definitely don't!
I've said it before (and to you if you remember) but the problem with so-called "excessive" self voting is that it's against a primary aim of Steemit, to use the wisdom of the crowd to evaluate and reward posts. If you can just buy that for yourself it doesn't really work.
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?
We have freedom here, but if we want Steemit to succeed then we need to use our power for good. Voting up your own content, no matter how bad, does deprive good content of rewards as there's only so much to go around each day. Bots don't discriminate on quality. The result is the same people on the trending page every day. I know whales want a return, but they can get something from curating others. The potential of steemit is being squandered. The big whales have the power to deal with abuse of the platform
Make a captcha before voting.
That can't be enforced by the blockchain as people can use other apps. Even disabling self-votes would not help much as people use proxies
we need a new blockchain
How would a new blockchain help? It couldn't enforce captchas either.
Anyone could start a new one, but building the community takes time.
Agreed with you completely. Self voting as the name itself implies related to psychologically speaking with the ego. Self vote crowd are egoistic beings. <3