These are great points, but I dislike the idea of gaming the system via bots, primarily because I feel it destroys incentives to network and actually care about our human compatriots. I even go so far as to frown on trails for the same reasons, I do all voting and resteems manually because I want to read and connect with all the posts I support. Your point about the visibility environment makes a lot of sense to me, sure it's settling to the status quo, but at least it is done with good intent and purpose.

 I'll have to admit, I too have used a few bots/resteem services on a post, more to satiate my curiosity than anything. Even this exception feels a little dirty to me and not because of the before mentioned intent, but rather it opens the door wider to bot usage and may come at the detriment of valuable lessons and benefits that come with the organic path(growth). To me it seems axiomatic that usage will also come with some level of temptation, the old power corrupts metaphor.

 The experience that has always helped me with things like this has been gaming. When ever I have used cheat codes in a game sure it was fun and there where benefits, but this was a shortcut to a sense of accomplishment. When ever I got impatient and desired the end game more than the game itself, I always felt I had lost something great. This translates to the journey itself, it's not a race, slow down and you will see all the small things that make up the whole more clearly. Here you will find beauty, the imagination, growth through skill and hard work, problem solving skills, improvise, compromise and a whole host of other important life lessons.

 This helps us to grow, connect, express ourselves, share, interact, learn, adapt, develop friendships, help each other, find our purposes, find our love, grow, grow, grow - shortcuts to me are the same as "money buys happiness." It's an error not of misplaced intent, but of missed objective.