I've written at length on the subject, and I'd like to share a couple of points on the debate.

Bots are here to stay because allowing them is part of the security features of the system, i.e. the steem blockchain does not use the usual anti-bot measures because most of them are not applicable and the others would restrict usage in a way that could lead to censorship (real censorship, not flagging 😂). I discussed it in a post here, where I also suggest some makeshift "solutions" (if you think bots are a problem).

Voting bots are basically advantage gamblers, legally gaming the system. Some people see this a problem but another perspective is the one you have cited, as a passive income, or as interest on your Steem investment in the language of the Steem whitepaper.

Not all bots are created equally and this point cannot be stressed enough. I think the majority of bots instances running are simply following accounts and blindly voting for everything. This is not smart, it's incredibly dumb. (not in a value judgement way, but in a rating of intelligence). There are some really smart ones out there but the best are closed source. Bit of a plug here, but I lead the Steem FOSSbot team (it's pretty much just me) and our work focuses on putting smarter stuff in the hands of everyone with open source software.

In sum, I'm for them, but only would support smart bots.