I kind of get where you are coming from and agree that those who get Auto-votes can quite easily abuse them, and it also centralizes the voting power quite a bit.
At the same time, it's not realistic for anyone to browse Hive daily, plowing through all the garbage to find something great which on top also comes from an account which is good to Hive. Nobody has time for that. I kind of like the idea behind Auto-votes in that it's some kind of patreon equivalent. You find people here you like, trust, and want to support in what they bring and to do so you put them on auto-vote. In reality though it mostly is more an 'upvote4upvote' dynamic.
However, the idea about creating a genuine blog and gathering a real following that eventually over time results in friendships and some auto-upvotes is one that I kind of like as long as it's not too much and it doesn't get abused. What curation groups should do, is scout for newer users with good content. Somehow they tend to end up upvoting the same people over and over again completely neglecting the KE Ratio, I think because they also often are lazy and here to earn a quick buck in the most efficient way.
Hive just remains a platform with a lot of flaws in it that need some fixes in one way or another but not much really gets done ever. or at least it doesn't feel that way.