I agree with the basic sentiment of your article. If they weren't essentially buying their own votes, I would say the market would take care of them. With the reward pool set up the way it is, though, these types of bots are indeed taking away rewards from the rest of us.
If you haven't already, you might want to connect with @seanengman. He's looking to get proactive too. The steemcleaner crew is doing what they can but I'm sure there's just a lot to try to police.
Steemcleaner is doing a great job! I try to report stuff to them as much as possible but like you said, they can't police everything. Steemit is community run and more users need to realize that and start flagging. It's encouraging to see that quite a few of the new users are realizing that and getting involved.