The biggest problem right now is - as you already said - that most bots are unregulated - which means everybody can buy themselves 100$ upvotes, which completely destroys the way in which great content should be valued.
Bots in general however aren't a bad thing - it is just something that we have to regulate. And even if there wouldn't be any bots - this wouldn't remove the general problem of vote selling.
I personally am developing a project called smart steem, which has the goal to create regulations and to reward great content. I haven't published it yet and actually didn't plan to talk about it yet, however, your post is just too fitting.
The main reason people are using upvote bots isn't because they want to make money by paying 5$ and earning 8$ but simply because it is very, very difficult to gain reach and exposure. When I first started out - at one point I've put 3-4 hours into writing, designing and finishing a post. In the end - that post didn't even get 5 views - which was extremely depressing.
However - those problems aren't solved by manual curation. It is simply not possible. At least not for the average steemian. Most steemians are watching what is trending or what is hot. But at that time - 90% of posts have already gone through without getting noticed. And this is where smartsteem comes in - supporting the posts who have gone unnoticed otherwise.
If you like to know more about it - let me know!
Thanks for your comment, @therealwolf.
I understand why bots are used. As said, I'm not against that. I probably understand that more ven than I understand the covert expectation, sense of entitlement almost, people seem to have with their content needing to get noticed. It is not because you go and stand at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park (London, UK) that I should also care about you standing there. Or listen.
It's an inherent element of the Internet and has existed ever since pre-www days. The Internet opens floodgates. Curation is historically an integral part of the Internet, another being search and search eventually becoming the curator for most.
Promotional tools are good. Can be good. But they can also become evil.
But when we focus on them being promotional rather than call a spade a spade and say they are advertising platforms built to fit and operate in this model, then the argument becomes a straw man argument and I need to call BS. Let's find ways in which we can allow both sides to live in harmony and thrive though. It isn't that hard to make that happen. It does require blatant honesty tho, especially from those who are on the financially operative side.