Hi @abrockman,
It's good to hear from you as well. I'm also glad we were able to talk about this here.
So I think what you mentioned above is the ACTUAL best argument against using bots, and that's that someone can just come and downvote you and you can lose everything you have invested. That's pretty scary, and I feel a bit of a problem platform wise.
In this case, there was a presumed justification for the downvote and flagging of your post even though it was more of just a misunderstanding. But that doesn't guarantee that someone couldn't just downvote you because they don't like you or for some other arbitrary reason.
That's why I think this is a bit of an issue with the platform and your situation really put a spotlight on it to me. In this case you lost money, but as you mentioned time is money also, if I spent a couple of week working hard on something and it was doing well, theoretically someone can just come along and remove all or most of the reward I receive arbitrarily. A lot of people have turned to Dtube because they don't like the fact that Google can just remove your content or demonetize it and there's nothing you can do about it, but your situation made it clear to me that on Steemit, other USERS could potentially do that. Obviously that's not what happened here, but it just opened my eyes to the possibility, since what I observed here was that you were accused, judged and punished within a matter of hours, before you even had a chance to defend yourself. Plus as you so eloquently put it, once that happens, you're shit out of luck.
Anyway, both you guys have schooled me on a lot of stuff and I appreciate it. Keep doing your thing man! One day this upvote will be worth more than a penny haha :)