What the curve does is that it makes it less profitable for low SP accounts and more profitable for high SP accounts to upvote themselves.
It doesn't really discourage anyone, it actually encourages users with high SP account to upvote themselves.
Users who want to upvote themselves are going to do it regardless of any curve. Sure some users may think it's not worth it for such low reward but on the other hand you will find people with lots of money that will find it very worth it, thanks to the curve.
This curve is such a bad way to deal with self voting as it assumes everyone with low SP account are self voters. It doesn't make the distinction between grandma's travel post or someone trying to abuse the system. It just reduces every post on the wrong side of the curve ( which is the large majority of post).
The only logical way to deal with this issue is to downvote self voted content. If there was a moderator category ( as in recent proposal) self voting would be dealt with swiftly.
Do you think self voting is big enough of a problem today that it warrants maximizing power of a few at the expense of the majority ?
I definitely don't. If self voting actually was a problem on this platform whales would already be all over it, curve or not.