So if you consider the low-appeal content as a form of "pollution", then the argument can be made that they've reduced pollution by 90%, since there could, otherwise, be 10 times as many low-appeal posts.

Yes and no. At a blockchain level, yes... but from what I've seen, most self-voters vote their comments which hides most of it from the front-end. And arguably, makes their self-voting more sociable than using a bidbot 🤔 So many contradictions 😆

I don't understand steempunks 🙂

It's all just too much for my simple mind to cope with. More often than not on Steemit, "Ignorance is bliss".

Now, excuse me while I go learn about the Coase theorem ;-).

Have fun with that... 😴 ...having just opened it, it looks quite interesting.