I agree that it's not all about speculation. Besides just trying to earn curattion and author rewards, there are people posting who want to promote their own sites or businesses. In that sense, buying upvotes probably isn't much different than paying for visibility/ advertising anywhere.

I'm new, but I'm sure that newbies (newts like me?) who think quality content is enough are like webmasters who think that quality is all it takes to rank first in Google for competitive terms.

Here's the problem: Paying for upvotes ins't transparent. Playing for ads or promotion is. I don't have an issue with people paying for visibility, but I do have an issue with a lack of transparency.