RE: Why is it possible to upvote your own post and comments?
You haven't understood it properly. The whales have every good reason to support good quality content and no financial incentive to support bad content because it damages the integrity of steemit as a whole.
It's their voting power that allows them to keep the balance and there would be no incentive for them to keep their money in steem power if it didn't allow them to promote content they felt was good.
Also if they've put a lot of money into steem power, therefore maintaining and supporting the whole community, then why the hell shouldn't they be allowed to utilise their power to promote any content they choose, including their own?
It's designed to reward those who take the time and effort to invest properly in the platform, either people who have no money to start and take a lot of time and effort to research and write and make good content, or people who do have money and their choice of contribution is to support whomever they want to.
This is a young system and may not be perfect and it's evolving but it is a hell of a lot better than anything else out there, and it is the only platform that is actually paying people a reward for their work creating content or curating it.
Steemit is fine. Don't change what doesn't need to be fixed.
Of course people should be able to upvote OTHER people's content, but to be able to upvote your own posts(which I could possibly get on board with) or your own comments only for pure and immediate financial gain desensitizing every positive aspect you have with this community. Anyone disputing this, is gaming the system, clicking their own comments for thousands of dollars, all coming out of the pool to make this place grow and thrive.
Sorry if I came across as a bit harsh.
Your point is really valid and it is the big concern that Steemit can stay a force for good and focused on great content. So you are right to question it, you should question everything. My personal view is that it's working and there is a benign balance to the Steemit ecology.
I've only seen pretty good content so far, and I've seen quite a few posts in the last nine days that could just have disappeared and instead got upvoted by larger forces. Equally probably a lot of even better posts disappeared amongst everything else. However in the wider scheme of things in the last ten days I've read more well researched and interesting content on Steemit than I ever came across on my other social media platforms.
If the fact exists that the balance of content is good, then, for me at least, that tells me that it's a good system. I don't think it's naive to believe in good where you see good actually happening.
So I'm not personally seeing evidence of Steemit being gamed. There's all sorts of content appearing in the trending page from authors / content creators who are from all parts of the steemit eco-system. However it is absolutely right to also question it as you've done, and if people don't question all aspects there will be no way of it staying pure as it develops further.
I appreciate you understanding my questions. I do think the platform is interesting and def has huge potential. I also understand things seem to be okay, but that also means, possibly, that they could be tweaked to be even better, allowing for even more quality of content. I do like the positivity on steemit, that is unique!
I actually really agree with you on this. I think the strongest systems are the ones that have the best real world testing and can then adapt and use all the lessons learned to make it better.
I've been really interested in how you could use Steemit to create an infrastructure for film-makers to be able to self fund and self distribute their films without having to go to Distributors. So I have a really specific angle of what I'd like to see it be able to do. It doesn't currently quite fit the needs of film-makers but there are already some film-makers trying to use it in different ways to suit their needs ( check out @steemfilm ) and it doesn't take long after that if enough people use the system in different ways for the developers hopefully to see the need to then build the features in.
If you are interested I wrote a really detailed article on what I'd like to see happen for film makers which is about Steemit becoming a new type of distribution platform where the production of the film itself becomes the distribution model so that the Distributor (think large Hollywood studios with vested interests) are taken out of the equation. It's too detailed to explain here but if you want to take a look at the article I want people to pull the idea apart and tell me what they see is wrong with it.
https://steemit.com/film/@angusg/a-new-way-to-fund-feature-films-based-on-the-steemit-blockchain