I’ll admit, I may be wrong on some points, but I think there are a couple areas where rep is actually a bit simpler than what you describe.

I believe Rep is entirely a handy scoring mechanism that is flawed by some of the things you mention (bid bots, self votes, flag wars.) It’s basically a running tally of the entire account history of upvotes vs. downvotes at a glance. That doesn’t mean that someone with negative Rep never earned any rewards, as flags on a post can continue to drive Rep down even after the payout value has been reduced to 0.00. So if someone earns $10 on post #1 and then gets $20 worth of flags on post #2, they will have gained money ($10) but lost Rep (twice as many downvotes as upvotes) over the course of the two posts. Rep of course in no way reflects account value due to this, as well as transfers in & out, etc. (as you note with Bernie’s Rep vs. value)

However I don’t believe Rep ever factors into reward calculations for curation, and I believe the idea that only people of higher Rep can hurt your Rep is a myth that has perpetuated. Bernie Sanders is a great example, at -17 Rep he is still adept at destroying the reps of a great many users. As with most things on the platform, Steem Power is the main factor, commingled with Voting Power %.

On several occasions I’ve heard of Rep being referred to as “non-consensus”, presumably alluding to the fact that it actually is not inherent or key to any blockchain calculations.

I also believe the increasing difficulty of Rep levels does not occur every level, it is every 10 levels. So getting from 50-51, 51-52, etc. is as hard as getting from 40-50. Getting from 60-61 is as difficult as all of the 50’s and so on. I know that for me personally, hitting 60 was like a brick wall and progress slowed to a crawl!