"I've seen it argued that without bots there would be little curation done, as there aren't enough manual curators. I dunno how true that is. It seems to me from the number of comments on posts that there are quite a few."

Not only that, but were bots to no longer deliver votes, all the rewards delivered would then come from manual curation. The same amount of rewards are produced either way.

Without bots, manual curation would become far more valuable. Bots demonstrably reduce human curation value, in terms of economic impact, by (I have seen but one estimate, from @everittdmickey) 95%. I submit that bots are decreasing the incentive to produce quality posts by an amount equal to their degree of curation.

I see one downside to banning bots, and that is that it would impact the 38 whales ability to profit from their stakes right now. I point out that they really have two choices. 1) continue to concentrate Steem in their wallets, and drive users away, or 2) begin to drive at least 30% of rewards to the 99+% of accounts that do not have mined stakes.

Really, the choice is theirs, and the consequences of their decision will be their responsibility. If they want to convert their flash mined stakes into actual money, they're going to have to use them to create a market - and they're failing to do that now.

@blocktrades proposal to make curation more profitable, so he can profit better from his stake now, won't improve that market. It will concentrate more Steem in his, and other paid delegation and votebot services, wallets.

This is exactly the opposite of what needs to happen for him to actually realize a profit in actual money, rather than imaginary tokens.

Thanks!