"Keeping mind power INSIDE the steem ecosystem is what will drive it--our conscious attention is incredibly valuable"

You are completely ignoring the fact that brain power wasted on mindlessly voting for the same people and same type of articles, as most users do, cannot be used on creative pursuits.

I use an auto-voter so I can reliably produce more content, instead of spending my time managing the legion of sycophants who whine at me if I don't vote their most recent flower picture. (Not that they are getting a vote anyway, as I vet each person's post history via chainBB and weight their vote weight and frequency accordingly.)

Auto-voting does not mean you don't vet bloggers for quality, first and regularly. It just means I don't have to manually place 200 votes per day.