I thought a bit about vote-buying and the service that @minnowbooster is providing and there are pros and cons. The current reward system on steemit does not reward good content directly, it rather rewards it by counting votes. The issue with that is that there is an emotional component that influences how votes are distributed. If you are my "friend" I generally vote for you regardless of what you write. If you are new and you don't have popular friends on steemit you are pretty much screwed. @minnowbooster is actually addressing an issue of Steemit, it's a promotional tool that new users can use to increase their visibility. Nobody gets rich by purchasing a vote with @minnowbooster, all it does is increase the visibility of posts in the trending page. Rationally it would not make sense to go through the trouble of promoting a post if I did not genuinely try to write good stuff. Going after users that try to promote their content is not going to solve much. People answer to incentives, if there is a certain behavior you want you just have to find a way to reward it more effectively. Right now good content is not rewarded directly, how many votes a post receives should be just one criteria, I am surprised view counts are not considered at all.