The users who pay for votes with their SBD are looking at the short-term gains and benefits through profit-driven extrinsic motivations for themselves,
I take issue with this statement. The fact is most of the vote purchases result in a net loss for the buyer, a profit above what the vote normally handed out would have garnered once all the bids are payed for received by the the vote giver. Much like self publishing where the platforms (Amazon Kindle, etc) have so much new material being loaded that your book quickly loses any visibility, it is the same here and will only get worse if they quit dragging their feet letting new members join. And if anyone of substance used the hot or trending categories the loss would be worth it. But it is throwing money away and enriching the bots. I find it ironic that just like in real life, those who set the game and profit from it seem to have their role minimized while those trying in desperation to use the game to advance from the bottom usually take the brunt of the anger and blame, as ways in many cases (not here from you but I have seen it) are looked to make sure they are penalized to keep them at the bottom.
As to the idea of Dan Larimer being against what is taking place, I have my reservations. This is his creation and was set up purposely to be centralized with the power in the hands of the few. If you haven't read this thread where Steem was created, I recommend you do.
It is a long read as they mine it in the thread, and leaves no doubt once finished that this chain was meant to be centralized. What you have here now is the result of centralization. All of this was easily foreseeable in its creation, and it was the cause of most of the whale creation. I was rivited to reading it, especially when you find people so proud of their newfound whale status they are bragging on names they used for wallets.
Everyone needs to realize this was created for exactly what is taking place right now. Either live with it or don't.
I've calculated the returns on a few posts that use the bid bots. SBD is at a loss most of the time since they don't get much more SP voted support to counter the SBD loss vs. payout return, but SP is gained, making it a profit overall. Although this was a few weeks ago, maybe it has changed now.
I've quoted Dan in the understanding he has now, based on realizations of issues with the original design. Quoting his mindset in the past is beside the point. You could do that with many people who advocate for something in the past, yet change their minds because they see how it has issues. The realizations of the mistake later on is more important than quoting the original mistaken goal in the past, lest one wants to simply keep going with a mistaken model just because someone said it in the past.
That is actually where it appears to hit the so called profit, turning it into a loss. I haven't really been using the bots so much the last month, but can tell you when I was before that if I spent 2 sbd on upvotes, I was lucky to get 2 sbd worth of votes, often it would be less. Then you subtract for the curation rewards, that leaves 1.5. But I don't get .75 SBD and then .75 SP. I would get .75 SBD and maybe half (.4-.45) in SP. Given that they are very close in value, it is because I am getting SP I am losing here (after the fact that many of the bots will accept bids that incurs a loss for the bidders)
If they were making all this mad profit everyone talks of, I would be posting so much and throwing every SBD I had into them because there would be no loss in it for me in searching for the rare person who searches through Hot (never had enough to get into Trending). It would be worth me posting daily quality posts. But I found myself losing, so no thanks. As I said, the profit seems to me to be on the part of the bot owners. Especially since some of the talk now seems to be if we could just strip all profit from them for the bidders it would stop the spam posting. It was a rare bot that was profitable from my view to begin with, so not seeing where making sure only the whales make every drip of profit is the cure. This is the type of logic one sees in a centralized place. Squeeze just a little more for the good of the small fry.
I get what you are saying, but on the flip side if someone does something repeatedly it is smart to account for that when making considerations. Sometimes there is truth to FUD and there is still plenty of smoke coming from his current project that has been questioned in such a way by those who understand this better than I, that it makes me pause with reservations.
But as I have said repeatedly, he made this and it is by the rules he wanted. If anyone doesn't like it they can feel free to make their own with their own set of rules. And again to the profit from using bots, if it was there the way everyone says I would be posting every day, maybe several times per day but it isn't and I am not. It takes time to post a quality post that has value for others (which you understand as I follow you because of the time you take into putting thought into yours). The difference between ours is that yours will pay you much more nicely than mine. I don't have hours per day to craft quality posts in exchange for .10 or less of payout if I am lucky. Once again, not complaining about this at all. I understand what I have experienced and adjusted accordingly. Truthfully I seem to do better finding quality posts and interacting with the authors and other commenters as quality posts seem to attract quality responses. For newcomers that would be my advice to growing here on the platform. The only workaround of the design (once again, not a failure as it was designed like this on purpose) that a new person coming here will find, in my opinion.
For the record, I don't know Dan, so all of my thoughts are entirely as you point out based on his own words and actions from the past. Maybe he has taken a huge change of heart on it all. But we all reap the karma of our actions, and my views would be one of them for him, not that I imagine it keeps him up at night worrying what practicalthought may think of him, lol.