The thing is, steem's design works around curation. By getting rewarded for being selfish, for not using your upvote to curate, for something that goes against steemit's grand design, there should be a penalty.

On HF20 you'll be able to upvote yourself as a means of promotion, but the $ will stay in the reward pool. You'll have to pick between "author + curation rewards and self-upvote weight benefits" and "free promotion" instead of getting both options without penalties.