If the abstract principle is correct, it is reflected in the concrete. You misinterpret my discussion about democratic processes and stakes because you are only looking at the involuntary side of it, and not paying attention to the democracy that takes place every day in corporate shareholders meetings and elections.
As I am pointing out, voluntary membership is muddied by the fact that there is unavoidable need to arbitrate the use of commons. I am contra all forms of commons, in fact, however, even if the road is privately owned, its use is communal. Thus the need for rules and etiquette.
My personal beliefs about law is they should be short, simple, and understood by everyone. Like the Ten Commandments in their simplicity and congruency (well, maybe the comparison falls in respect of congruency).
Your quote from the Whitepaper is in relation to the justification for the pre-HF19 vote reward calculation, I believe. Are you arguing against HF19's levelling of the playing field?
Self votes made no impact on rewards for the majority of users pre HF19, with the exception of whales, who were then put under a spotlight and I forget how many times I read posts where people published the data of their investigations of this mischief. It is in this respect that Dan's original theory for how to distribute rewards was functional. However, after a year operating, the outcome was it failed in the central goal of promoting quality, by granting too much power to too small a group, to VOTE ON OTHER PEOPLE. This led to homogenisation and all kinds of groups formed defensive cliques against this power granted to the Whales by this accelerating vote calculation.
In fact, the community lost faith in the system BECAUSE of this ruleset. I know I did.
Now, anyone can upvote themselves, but unlike the Whales pre HF 19, not being a small and visible minority, everyone is constructing justifications for their greed.
If it wasn't ok for whales to do it before, then it shouldn't be ok for everyone else to do it now, either.
lastly:
The ability to self vote was part of the pre HF19 system. Its uses are to give a sense of self-empowerment in little things like being able to push a comment up the thread, which by the way, has a setting that defaults to 'trending' and can be changed to other options. Viz:
