Thanks for defending Kevin and I

It's certainly true that we self voted considerably under the previous economic scheme which was broken. We also fought hard to implement an improved economic system on here over the last year and a half, almost as long as I've been self voting and definitely longer than Kevin.

Under the new system it's not anywhere near as expensive and therefore not entirely futile to fight against dishonest voting, whether they be in the form of self voting, vote selling or other methods. I wish to do what I can to hopefully restore the platform to one that is mostly based around honest voting, that is voting behavior that's reflective of the subjective opinions of the voter of its content, rather than where the money is going (usually back into the stakeholders pocket while intermediaries such as bid bots take a cut)

If I had attempted to do so under the old broken economy over the past year and a half, I'd be guaranteed to fail and have a wallet that's 300k in Steem lighter to show for it. Under the new incentives fighting for platform wide honest behavior is far more viable. Like you, everyone should do their part to help make this happen so please don't let your downvotes go to waste.

It's very possible to reach a new equilibrium where most of the stakeholders are using their stake to curate (either directly or indirectly) and settling for 50% curation rewards. Collectively we keep each other in check and prevent ourselves from trying to funnel all our voting rewards back into our own pockets and in doing so undermining this entire platform.

Of course we may fail, in which case, Steem won't be worth anything anyway and those who continue to abuse will only enjoy a relatively small batch of rewards for their efforts in the interim as the price slowly dwindles from 15c to next to nothing.