This is some nice thoughts. Steemit retention rate is not very high for the time being as many gets discouraged when their posts are almost $0.
In these early stages of the platform, I believe they are necessary for the growth. With time there may be rules that will be accepted by the community on the use of auto votes and bots.
Edit: this made me realise that I should start considering upvoting my own post. Thanks for the knowledge :)
I think one of the most discouraging things is how little content aside from crypto, steemit (clearly I'm part of that problem), and weird nutty prepper/conspiracy stuff there is.