So, when I say I'm not worried if I only get 80% of my investment back or even 60% back. If I invest 100 Hive, get 60 back for myself and 60 back for GLD token holders? That's getting 120 back on a 100 investment. Some for me and some for others. I am quite happy for that.

If you don't get your 100 back, then your next lease will be smaller and your community will get a smaller vote. You need to make the 100 grow to be good for you and the community. You can only make 100 grow with lease, by self voting or vote trading.

Leasing is always a loss, even if you try to count the author rewards that you are giving to your community. Using your current lease order, you are probably paying around 11% apr, so you will loose about 3% in curation rewards. When this lease is over, you will have less for your next lease, and your vote will get smaller and smaller at each round. Up until the point where there won't be any Hive left for leasing and neither you or your community will get anything. You and your community looses and only the lessor is winning.

If you use your own HP to vote, you get a better return, your vote increases every time, and your community will get a bigger vote as time goes by.

Then there is self voting which is a little more contested. If I write an article why can't I upvote myself? It is only one article and one vote and if I'm proud why not give myself a pat on the back? Some frown upon it and others wave it along as just the way the system works. If I'm correct its not encouraged but also not likely to get me banned (correct me if I'm wrong).

It's totally fine to self vote, when you do it once in a while. What's frowned upon is farming self votes, voting multiple times (main or alts) to take advantage of the reward pool. If you put leasing and self vote together, it will look bad as well.