I agree with your analysis - you go to the point: bots cannot bring more value to the economy than they put into it, because that's basically not their purpose. If they are loss making, their owners will stop using them. The maximum they do is to redistribute income generated (to big owners, maybe?). Anyway, licensing bots is an interesting option to address the issue. The fundamental thing is to attract real players, and that means improving their experience when they start playing (which is frustrated by playing strong bots). Let's see how things will unfold with those changes...