Thank you for opening this Knight's eyes to what Steemit might look like in a pay-for-vote-bot free blockchain @trufflepig - excellent post.
For a long time I have said that pay-for-vote-bots were damaging the growth potential of Steemit - you have effective demonstrated one of the reasons why.
This whole notion of charging to distribute something that you are granted for free, is completely unethical. And it is made worse by the fact that you are already earning rewards for curating anyway.
I am not going to sit here and whinge about it though - I will simply go on rewarding genuine, high-quality contributors to the platform and hope that one day the competition becomes so fierce and the margins so slim that all steemians simply give up on them.
Thanks again and resteemed.
SirKnight!