Ah, piglet, I love your commitment and idealism, but in focusing on business, you miss a deeper aspect of this whole shebang.
Belonging to a community motivates behavior that reaffirms that belonging. Reputation is the ultimate status report on whether you are a good community member or not.
Since bidbots corrupt the method by which reputation is gained in this community, this means that all good standing members must succumb to that corruption to maintain their status within it.
The best people in the community use bidbots, not because they want to disincentive growth (which is the unfortunate side-effect of bidbots, since they eat the rewards that would otherwise be used as bait to onboard active users), but because they want to be upstanding.
A realignment of reputation is required to realign the incentives of Steemit away from profit-taking towards investment and growth.
I agree that bidbots and vote buying are a way to bypass the normal reputation mechanism, but I don't believe the bulk of vote buyers is motivated by that when they buy votes, because:
While it may play a role for some, I strongly suspect money is the only motivator for a great majority of vote buyers, and not status. Wallet size determines who you are, what you can do, and what sort of votes you get on Steemit; it is the new reputation metric.
Another aspect is, that raising a few people's reputation numbers in an underhanded way has little ill effect on Steemit; at worst, it is annoying for those who got their reputation the old-fashioned way.
For these two reasons. reputation wasn't mentioned in the posting.
I take your point about the devaluing of reputation.
I could be wrong, but I suspect you underestimate the effect of it.
Whenever folks here achieve a reputation elevation, they celebrate it, and are congratulated on it more than any achievement in earning money. They are rewarded in expressions of love.
And since every extra nine points of reputation are TEN times harder to gain, than every single reputation point you EVER achieved before, the need to funnel immense amounts of money through bidbots becomes paramount to gaining those extra critical points.
The love a person gets for achieving grade 70, in particular, is IMMENSE. Surely, you, Sir, at rep 71, know that the birthday party for a 70 rep knows no more Steemit love than the whole Steemit universe can give.
A slowly enfolding, squeezing, snuggling, sentimental, Steemian embrace.
Here's are questions to which I don't know the answer: How did you achieve a 70 rep, how hard was it, how did it make you feel to achieve it, and were you loved and embraced by the community for achieving it? :)