I love your points.

" then we need a fork to fix it, not reliance on the good will of the masses not to take advantage of it."

Agreed. Steemcleaners, Spaminator, Cheetah, manual rockstars of varying repute or notoriety such as pfunk or Berniesanders...they can only do so much. We must minimize the time and efforts of these people that we allow to be wasted on abuse with hard code, and not fight an endless battle against what can't be stopped. Remove the economic incentive with intelligent restrictions rather than "send our best men to die in the trenches for years". As a wild, off the top of my head, example, what if new accounts could not cash out any rewards for a full power down cycle? What does that do to abusers?

"Self-upvoting: To me, this just means you value the effort you put into your post."

I would argue if you aren't producing content you see worthy of whatever your stake's share of the rewards are, you've already dun' screwed the pooch.

Large users who feel they have enough to do this I, of course, applaud as much as anyone else who gives "charity" to something they believe in.

"These exist to increase the chances of content being seen. If you value your effort enough to take the risk of buying a vote that will put your content in front of others who may also find value in it, that is your decision. "

There are also valid reasons to use these bots that are not solely selfish. At the behest of a Steemit friend, I began using these last week and the difference for the curation rewards for my followers is mammoth. My post times don't always sync up with the bids on the bots, but when I can add votes to fully curated posts I am giving huge rewards to my loyal voters and followers who have stuck with me for months through what I am sure were not game-theoretically-optimal curation rewards.

I've also lost over 15 SBD on a single bid for boosting bots, as a result of last minute bidding antics. Depending on the time of day and the bot, there can often be no way to get these votes without actually taking a loss. I work hard on my posts, so it's still totally worth it, and I often do OK.

"Voting Bots"

I agree. These are a scapegoat for the real problem - voting without any real interaction, whether that be reading or in a side community in discord, etc.