"the community will decide the value of a post and upvote/downvote accordingly" - but that is wrong and contrary to both the Steem philosophy as explained in the whitepaper and to basic principles of social growth !
The community should decide whether to upvote or not to upvote. That is VERY, extremly, fundamentally different from downvoting. Downvoting is dangerous, socially corrosive and is akin to censorship.
Downvoting was intended as a tool to protect the blockchain from obvious, clear abuse, not as a means to rank the value of two normal posts
Bid bots: you are fooling yourself. 1,5% of votes in number, but how much in VP and rewards ? That's the number that counts ! I can use buildawhale and other bots that offer front-running services and get 1000 votes worth $0.000 followed by 1 vote from buildawhale, worth $100.000 ...
And even those 1000 that you assume are "human users" actually you have no way to say how many are not fake and duplicate accounts ...
And no, it's not funny that users complaining use bots to boost their complaints. Haven't you heard the saying "never bring a sword to a gun fight" ? If you want a complaint about a weapon heard you need to use at least the same weapon (or more powerful), otherwise your complaint will simply be ignored because "might makes right" - especially in a world ruled by money and money only ...
Finally, the "bouquet final" is extremly ironic - especially since you don't even realize how ironic it is !
Ok, let me run it past you slowly ... you've always been told that you are the exception to the rule ... which tends to indicate that it's probably true ... you are very likely a uniquely gifted and skilled individual ... which means that you cannot be the standard by which to judge the average user of this platform. Your example should be discounted as a "statistical aberation"
You are like Hercules saying "I don't see why all the fuss about those 12 tasks, they seemed very doable for me, I just came in and put in the work and made things happen ! I just kept putting in the footwork and finding ways to be creative with that stupid lion and with the Hydra and when cleaning those stables ... everybody else should just stop whining and simply put in the footwork like I did, what's so difficult ???"
If Steemit is a platform where one has to be Brandon Frye (or Hercules) to succeed, then Steemit has a problem. I'm sure you can understand that.