hm i was considering buying steem to give more visibility to my posts, but if you want to remove self-vote then this incentive to buy steem disappears...and the whole attention economy collapses.

Very good point. It is certainly something that needs to be considered however if you read further I suggested an alternative would be to exclude curation rewards for self voting.

As for the numerous people abusing the system I agree something needs to be done about it but there is no simple solution just as with this issue.