It is circle jerking for sure! and if steemit becomes succesful in a way that lots of people are going to use it. All of these issues need to be adressed. otherwise it wont work ever. It need to evolve. Their needs to be an ethical or cultural code to function the way it was intended to be.

Now you could just get out a big loan. put it into steem power self upvote 10 times a day and make a profit out of the inflation of this currency what is being done by lots of whales. but why not? it's free money. So in my opinion that's the big issues.