I welcome discussion on this topic as it is something that has been burning on my mind. I am not sure I fully agree with your proposed solution but it is refreshing to have a discussion on this. I have read through many of the comments on this post, and I get the feeling that before tackling the problem we need to first identify what the problem we are trying to solve is.

Is the issue related to payouts, or content promotion?

The guts of your post talks mainly about visibility, but I hear from comments people referring to ROI and the like. Why are these two dynamics entangled in the discussion in the first place and is this the issue. Is the problem we are trying to solve how do we making new good content more visible?

Upvoting your own post

For most people I have no problem with them upvoting their own post but at the same time is it really necessary, does it really add any value to the platform. They wrote it so surely they would vote for it anyways!

For whales, I cant believe they upvote their own posts. It makes little financial sense. Short term they get a boost, but longer term the platform suffers and their investment falls in value, at a significantly leveraged rate.

At the moment upvoting your own post is a way to promote your own content. This will never work unless there is a cost to you for promoting it. If you couldn't upvote your own post then you would have to spend SBD to promote your content in that way on the promoted tab, or via alternative means. The vote is a means of the community steering the daily steem to your account, of rewarding you for your contribution. If you can reward yourself it reduces the monetary value of Steem. The reason Steem has any monetary value is because of the network and community created and the fact that they are willing to use it to pay for goods and services.

Sock Puppets

Sure people can set up other account to vote for themselves, but maybe we should be tackling that problem too rather than dragging it into the discussion on payouts and visibility.

For example you could possibly introduce a penalty into the algorithm for repeated voting to the same accounts, or group of accounts. If this is not possible there could be dedicated accounts that downvote excessive repeat voting circles. (Not proposed solutions just the first thing that came into my head)

Level of Payouts

I would also like to throw this into the discussion. Many people feel this is a topic there should be no cap on payouts, let the market decide.

That argument makes sense when we have an efficient market. What about introducing a cap until Steemit achieves a sufficient scale so that good content is rewarded by the crowd? Or payout target such suggested by several people in the past?