I don' think I've been here long enough (only slightly longer than you) to know what the solution is.
But perhaps https://steemit.com/steemit/@maxg/bid-bot-usage-report-for-02122018 might help the bots make sense - they always pay out less than they take in overall (kind of like casinos).
A more up-to-date and detailed explanation of curation rewards is here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@calamus056/curation-rewards-explained-in-great-detail
Your own link says this is completely untrue.
Bots are not meant to be cash machines, they are meant to be promotional tools.
Ah yes, looking at it again, I did read that wrong! My apologies! Do bots effectively run at a loss then? (If that's a stupid question, feel free to ignore it).
Not at a loss, but most of us don't make much as the delegators make the real profits. The vested curation rewards are most of what we earn. There are some bots that don't need delegation and they do a lot better.
I agree with this statement 100%. There’s nothing wrong with paying bots to promote your content. That’s what would sustain this business on the long term.
But once bots become cash machines to extract money from the system without adding any significant value in return in the form of quality content, then this platform will have a problem on the long run. It won’t be able to sustain itself. The developers need to do something about this problem in order to make it a sustainable business.
Thank you for your reply and the links, @samueldouglas.
What I understand from the summary of the first link is that people invested $68,774.03 and received $79,661.86. That's a 15% income in a day or week; I don't how the calculation has been made.
If you compound that to a year or multiple years, that's a huge income, which supports the theory above. That money is paid by all the Steem investors.
Correct me, if I'm missing something here.
Like I said, I haven't really worked it out yet. It's not as simple as $ spent on votes vs $ paid out though. The bid-bots often pay out more in votes than people bid in any given day. But, the curation rewards they collect can be considerable - @buildawhale collected approximately 1000 SP in the past week.
Your explanation is more detailed, but it supports the pyramid scheme theory above.
Money is flowing from the small investors to big investors through post and curation rewards.
The quality of posts is just a marginal factor. The main factor is the share of a user in the voting power.
I think @themarkymark's comment shows why I shouldn't be giving advice in this area yet!
No, on the contrary! I appreciate your contribution.
I wouldn't be able to find those links without your comments.
This is how we find the truth by discussing. That's why I invited feedback at the end, because I'm not sure 100% what's going on here either.