You make some good points. Thank you for the added background information.
I respect your perspective although I don't entirely share your enthusiasm for this form of what I would call corporatized curation. I very much prefer to just see people organically voting for what they like, or what they want to see more of. There are obviously different points of view on the matter.
Let me ask a serious question. When does the need for curation guilds end, and Steem/it become like other social sites where the users simply do their own voting and it is not funneled though a guild structure? What measurable and achievable criteria would you put forward for declaring that the mission of these guilds is accomplished and they can be disbanded?
EDIT: I just took a look at the latest Daily Curie, and I frankly would have to once again say that opinions differ on these things because I do very much see a hodgepodge. I don't know if those top 5 categories/tags are very broad or it is a question of whatever Curie votes for ends up defining the top 5 tags, but either way what I see defies any obvious themes (to my eye at least).