My thoughts on this...might turn into a post withing a comment...lol.

First off there are a group of us out there who are trying to help the newest members of steemit onboard. We run around giving away upvote after upvote taking time to support these new members. For the most part we go widely unnoticed by the larger fish in the sea, or they notice and don't give a crap about the time and expense that we are investing to help make steemit a more viable platform. To those big fish, stop worrying about your short term ROI and start supporting those of us that are willing to invest our most valuable asset, TIME.

Picture what @pifc could accomplish with a delegation of say 50k SP. With that we could take newbies and get them enough SP to remove them from the delegated SP tit pretty quickly returning this to the pool. We could actually boost posts from newbies to a level that would excite them about the potential of steemit and hopefully get them to invest more time and reinvest their SBD into SP. The added growth of steemit by keeping more of the newbies active would push up prices for everyone.

Honestly I'd much rather have 10,000 members add 10sp to their accounts over the next week then 1 whale buy up another 100,000 increasing their dominance. Creating a growing group of small accounts will lead to a much more sustainable platform over time. To achieve this we need more resources allocated to those of us willing to invest our time.

Second. Self growth can be achieved while helping others, but it will be slowed at first. But long term IMO it will allow for the growth of a community of people who know that you are part of why they have succeeded and grown to the point they are at. These people should and will repay the favor over time giving you votes and other support which will help you start growing at a faster pace. This community growth is critical for long term success IMO.

The Give First and then Receive approach has been proven to be very effective as a way to reach your goals. Give people value in terms of your time, votes, and knowledge to help get them off the ground and long term I feel that you will end up with an army of people that will help you succeed.

As my vote keeps increasing and the votes of those around me increases we are all benefiting from each others growth.

The smaller members of steemit seem to all go their own way far to often. When in reality their voice could be very strong if they worked together. 100 accounts at 100sp is the same as 1 supporter with 10,000sp. It's far more likely that the 1 person misses a day vs all of the 100.

Now I'm ignoring the whales in this thought process as most of them have so much of their SP tied up in voting rings, bid bots, and other things that make getting a vote from them next to impossible so why invest your time worrying about them.

Third point: Honestly nobody should even slightly be concerned with voting for someone that doesn't return the favor on a regular basis. If you comment on a post and the author doesn't take the time to reply, upvote you, or look at your posts why are you there? Some people in their quest to kiss ass of the larger fish out there are just ending up with a mouth full of whale shit. These whale take all the penny votes on their posts giving nothing in return day after day after day. They keep growing stronger because the smallest members are so busy trying to get that elusive whale vote that will never come they waste 10-30% of their voting power...sometimes much more...on people that don't even kind of care about you.

Find people who will take the time to engage with you and support those people. They are the most likely to end turning into a 2 way street with both parties gaining from the relationship. Any relationship in which you give over and over with nothing in return is unhealthy. Cut those people from your life and focus on those who care.