So we put our work in the hands of others to decide whether what we write up, no matter the time and effort it takes. It is up to the people to decide what is worth their upvote and the amount of their upvote like if it is money that they own to give away (yet it is not.)

In a way, it is. It costs Resource Credits, which is a type of currency. The economics of Steemit are complicated, but if you pay in resource credits to upvote, comment, and resteem, then you find that you can't do those things because you have exhausted you resource credits, you lose out on rewards until your resource credits are regenerated. That makes it currency.

Just put a picture and throw in some bot votes.

Some people do that.

It really does take away what the platform is about. It's not just a reward system, but of also connections. The people are not robots. The people are real, their time is real and their skills are real. If we leave it in the hands of bid bots, then what is all this for? Let's just make more robots, make them right for us (if its not done already) and sit on our fat asses to watch our wallets get just as fat while we waste away whatever passion, emotion, and heart we have, as we become less human in this robotic world. We are already losing jobs to these mechanics. Why make it the same in a blogging, vlogging platform? Then what does it mean to be human in the end?

This is excellent.

Steemit could transform into nothing more than a clever auto-investing scheme. Create a garbage post, pay for some bidbot votes, watch your account increase in value. It could potentially be better than a 401k. But, as you noted, it's also about connections. That's why you have curation trails and groups like Power House Creatives fostering those connections. If you take the social out of social media, it isn't social media any more. Call it techno-media, or auto-media, maybe even robo-media. We need to work together to keep the social in the social media.