You pay for it, and so do we.

You pay for it, because your voting power decreases, giving less likelihood you can share your voting power to help curate other people's posts... which is what this system is founded on... being able to upvote other people's articles/posts.

The rest of us pay for it, if you are upvoting simply because you like yourself, or you like people who reply to your articles. (I'm not saying you're doing it for that reason -- but some people other than me could see it that way)... When people see it that way that might discourage them from upvoting you.

I really don't know. Look at the huge amount of comments on this blog. Everyone has a different opinion. It's a difficult problem with no easy answer. :(