Give the little guy a fighting chance at making a big impact.
YES.
Even though I'm on the fence about banning bots, I feel that you made a lot of valid arguments. Perhaps if they can be moderated and not be able to make an impact (i.e. not earn any Steem rewards) it could be a viable solution. Perhaps create a separate user type for bots to segregate them. I don't want to sound to holocaust-y, but I guess it would help mitigate the growing problem.