Agreed on all points. Bots are not really doing much. If we can add a great search/discover feature, that would be great. The upvote/resteem bots are really ruining the platform. If you can simply buy upvote+resteem why bother with quality. That's a really bad incentive. Unless the bots can bring more money than they ask for (1 SBD for upvote+resteem) nobody would use the bots. What you end up with is people gaming the system.
That's not really the worst part. The good content creators will be forced to use bots as that's the only way they can gain visibility when they start out on steemit. This turns to a death spiral.
The main selling point of steemit is the quality content. That's why I'm here. I love the community. I love reading/discovering/learning stuff on steemit. But bots don't contribute much.
Dash is my #1 currency coin. The thing I love the most about it how well the incentives are set. (https://www.dashforcenews.com/6-ways-dash-uses-economics-solve-technical-problems/) If you set the incentives you can get the outcome without any centralized control. People will control themselves into doing what's best for them. If you screw up the incentives you are doomed.