Paying for votes through various services is a confidence booster for newcomers who will perish if there are no intrinsic systems to support them.

In any case, the concept of paying for content promotion exists everywhere on the internet and the real world - promotion through purchased upvotes is a form of promotion. It makes the platform a level playing field for a number of reasons which may not be needed to be discussed here.

Bad content gets rewarded - true. But ironically, the silver lining could be that the person paying to get his (bad) content voted on is also making an investment. Not in any way supporting the publishing of bad content but don't bad people invest in real estate?