I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. The way I see it is that there is a obviously a financial incentive to use upvoting bots, but there is also a psychological pressure to do so. We may all agree that in general the platform would be better off (quality content rising to the top) if everyone refused to use bots, but as soon as a few people start using them then its “why should they profit and not me?”. In Game Theory there is the idea of the equilibrium point, basically the optimum behaviour that individuals within a system perform in order to do better on an a given incentive (i.e. points, money etc), currently here on steemit the equilibrium point seems to be to use bots. Like you say if you stop using them you start missing out.

If a top down change were to occur (somehow removing the upvoting bots), there is a chance that you would earn less than you would when they are in place. A few dollars per post rather than 10s of dollars. If that were the case would you still use the platform?

If the answer is yes, then you may want to consider stopping using them. A good way to encourage a behaviour you want others to also adopt is to perform that behaviour (i.e. not using bots) yourself and demonstrate that you can do quite well while doing so.

The pain will always come from comparing yourself to others.

The way out of this is often to find a different incentives within the system to focus on. In my opinion community is likely the best option here. If you currently have all of your basic needs (food, health, shelter, beer) meet, meeting esteem needs by being part of a community will ultimately satisfy you better than financial rewards.

It’s human nature to focus on the money aspect and it's going to suck losing that but at least this way you will be incentivised by creating a better community rather than finding the best bots to upvote your posts, and this may ultimately keep you on the platform longer than may have otherwise.

After writing this I have no idea if I fully agree with what I have written here (mostly just an chance for me to think out loud about this)