I see a lot of people who almost never, or literally never give up votes back to people even when they get up votes themselves. Whether it is posts or comments, you know the two types. Those who give up votes out and those who take them in. Which type really earns more?
The truth is those who give more up votes earn more! Why? Organically people like those on Steem that give to others and work to ensure good content is curated. If you are always self-upvoting your own posts and comments and rarely if ever giving your votes to others, what value have you really added?
In fact I could argue you are taking value from the rest of us, you are basically only providing yourself with votes while never contributing votes to your fellow Steemians! These practices are in direct violation of the very essence of what Steem was founded on.
I employ everyone to read the white paper but I will leave you with this quote from the white paper:
The naive voting process creates a N-Person Prisoner’s Dilemma whereby each individual voter has incentive to vote for themselves at the expense of the larger community goal. If every voter defects by
voting for themselves then no currency will end up distributed and the currency as a whole will fail to
gain network effect. On the other hand, if only one voter defects then that voter would win undeserved
profits while having minimal effect on the overall value of the currency.
- Page 14 of Steem White Paper: https://steem.io/SteemWhitePaper.pdf