You make a pretty good argument against self-voting, I personally still do it on my blog posts, never my comments. I think it's about time to stop doing that, especially since I'm putting more effort in seeking other options.
Bid bots are indeed a bit like gambling, but I do really like that @buildawhale also manually curates entries. I don't know if there are other bots that do that as well.
I do like the buildawhale curation initiative.