What also strikes me, talking of where value gets frittered away, is that folk don't realise that voting from dapps like Partiko also dilute the value of votes.

Thanks. I hadn't considered that. It does make sense, however. I make most of my posts from either @esteemapp or @steempress and the rewards, just for using those apps, are HUGE. But that's not why I do it. If Steemit would fix its user interface and make posting from its own website easier and more intuitive, that would be my preferred method. I got so frustrated the first month of being here that I figured there has to be easier ways to craft a post than trying to fight with the Steemit posting feature. That's when I found Busy, which was a little better. But then I came across eSteem, and that was A LOT better. SteemPress allows me to post to my website and see it on Steemit, so there's an added benefit there. What didn't occur to me is that these apps are diluting the rewards pool, just like the bidbots. If I did the math, I'm sure I'd discover that in a real sense. But I would claim that there is a difference, philosophically.

When I started this experiment, I operated on a few hypotheses. Only one of them turned out to be wrong. I thought that curators would get more rewards because the bidbots made the rewards pool for individual posts larger. I was wrong, as I (hopefully) clearly illustrated.

As the bidbots grow stronger and more people who post quality content discover other platforms and migrate to those, Steemit will, more and more, become a pay-to-play scheme. You'll HAVE TO PAY for bidbot votes if you want to stick around. And you better know what you're doing or you'll lose. In that case, it will become nothing more than a fancy investment scheme for which the SEC, FINRA, and CFTC will have ogling eyes (as if they don't already).