I have given this thought, and reckon it's not a separate issue at all, but the very heart of the issue.

First, the supposition that those competent and fortunate enough to be able to mine Steem during the attempt to avoid US regulations during it's inception are investors is ludicrous. Those folks that simply mined and held on didn't invest in the sense investment generally has meaning.

This establishes that their motivations and experience are different from actual investors, who depend on capital gains for their ROI. Speculators, traders, and profiteers are other things entirely. the whales on Steemit are practically universally not investors.

Since they aren't investors, and aren't intent on capital gains for their ROI, they seek ROI by other means, and those means have become bidbots. This is the root of the point of this post OP has made.

This is what profiteering looks like, and as is usual, profiteering is a short term gambit, that almost always sucks all value from the source of profits before moving along with the essential value and leaving the shriveled husk of the endeavor abandoned in their wake.

I see but little sign that whales as a group have any intention to grow Steemit into a platform nominal to provide the substantial capital gains investors would be intent on. Such ROI would dwarf the meager returns rewards pool mining provides. The means of guiding Steemit to generate such returns in unfamiliar to them, as they are not seasoned investors, nor even actually investors at all.

They do what they know, and that is mine.

That is not a separate issue, and is the issue at hand.