I have no issue with people's dislike of bid-bots, I myself am one of those that believe they are bad for the growth of the Steem Block chain. At what price point do we expect large accounts to stop voting above for a single post? At 200,000 Steem Power a vote at current price would be $2.83, and at 500,000SP it is $7.60. So do we put a maximum allowable vote price on people? Do we limit the ability to cast a vote at a maximum value of only say $5.00? Those are today's prices, So at $5.00 it would not be difficult for a large account to manually curate, At higher values, then that becomes a problem.

I do not recall for sure, but it seems that bid-bots came about during a time when votes as a price value were being given in the $100.00 range. This upset a few people because they were not on the receiving end of those votes. So Bid-bots, then vote trails came about, I am not sure which was first, but they are both in my opinion not good for the financial standing of the Steem Block Chain.

The down vote is a "Tool", when it becomes a "Platform", then it is no better for the financial standing of the Steem Block Chain, than the bid-bots or un-monitored vote trails that cast votes on spam, and plagiarized content.

Threats, coercion, and extortion's are not the way to solve any problem. I have seen to many comments associated with down vote pools about If you interact with...you place your self in danger of being down voted, this type or similar are not about a group trying to do good for the Steem Block Chain, these types of comments come off as a group of people trying to control the behavior of people, and to enslave them to their will, their likes, their dislikes.

How long before we see those types of comments on post about "Nixon, Trump, Kennedy, Flat Earth, Muslims, Jewish People, Nazi's, UFO's, etcetera"

... but I have not seen one compelling argument as to why we suffer bid bots

That is why we suffer bid-bots. That is why I have an issue with down vote pools. If a post is over valued in a persons opinion then down vote it for it being over valued in your opinion, not because they used bid-bots and vote trails to raise the value of the post.

I have seen people down vote post because of "conspiracy or belief", or life style choice, down vote pools are likely only to grow in power after HF21 if it is voted in, the problem is going to grow.