@davemccoy, I think bots are still required at the moment as we still do not have enough traffic, views and votes within the ecosystem. Steem is an economy based on participation, I think we basically have a lack of that. And when humans are not enough to generate the level of participation, bots take over.
I think this is all temporary. When we reach a stage where we have enough human participations, bots will eventually lose their effectiveness. By then, we can truly see who are swimming naked. The hivemind update will bring communities function and we can all organize ourselves into proper groups instead of using tags and external services like discord. I hope that will lead to more participations from humans.
that is an interesting theory @culgin
I can understand to a degree, but I also think that the people with power will see one day that their "power" is better spent in developing people and not increasing their slice of the pie. If the people were supported better by all the various groups, "churn" would slow down and they would get a much higher degree of participation.
I definitely agree with you that things will change that will lead to more human participation. Its just a matter of the path we take to get there! ;)