Then the argument here's simply a matter of:-

a) Not agreeing on the operational fees incurred of SG (On the flipside, I do hope that you think Curie's reasonable, as the goal has always been to make it a useful public utility of sorts that doesn't take too much of the daily pool). This is simply a matter of what is fair payment

b) Not agreeing that it's a service (since you've used "services" and "professional curators"). I think it's a legit service. It doesn't mean that one isn't providing a curation service if everybody else can also curate for free themselves. Just like babysitting. Just about anyone can babysit and even do it for free, but there are definitely "professional babysitters". I just think it's not very reasonable to just blanket it up and say that it's not "work".

c) Not agreeing on the nature of posts that are being self-upvoted. In this case, I can agree that quality of posts should really be considered before getting the self-upvote. Personally, I wouldn't do it on my own posts if I think they're not one of my best works (doesn't happen often for me). That said, I think the question now should be.. what if SG's self-upvotes are actually stuff that you greatly value?

fund low quality pretext content

What does this mean, and example?

Hopefully, people like ned (whos participation in abuse of this sort baffles me) will wise up and cut them off.

I'm not trying to defend guilds blindly in anyway, but again, the word abuse here really depends on the 3 points above..