I think another aspect that nobody really talks about is that bid bots help bring money to Steem. Many of the folks against bid bots also upvote themselves. They defend this action by saying the self-voters have invested in Steem, commited it to voting power and thus earn the right to self-vote.

Well, lets look at where that voting power comes from. It comes from holding a certain amount of currency. That currency was bought either with some other currency or with sweat. So you are in effect buying votes. I'm not mad at self-voters though. The whole community has the ability to review your work and determine if your self vote is justified or not. The same holds true for people who buy votes. They have to have money in order to buy votes. That money must come from one of two sources; sweat or outside currency. If they earned SBD by making 20 posts in order to upvote their content, that's sweat. If they converted BTC, LTC or Fiat to Steem in order to be able to purchase votes, they did it with money. Just like a self-voter, they have paid for their privilege.