"...those big accounts you're talking about are having a huge incentive to achieve a high STEEM price and to keep Steem healthy."
That incentive is proportionally reduced by the rent they can extract for their stake. You know that. It's what you do. That's what bidbots are: mechanisms to produce rentier income. They're not effecting curation based on content quality. No one buys your vote for that. You collect rent on your stake so they can get fat rewards, and for no other reason. Curation that is content agnostic isn't curation at all. It's a huge part of the dismal retention rate and almost entirely responsible for the condition of trending.
Please don't gloss over basic investment principles in order to steer the narrative away from your business model just because it reflects poorly on you. Step up and own it. It's your legacy.