I think the idea that we will ever be able to remove all illegal vote buying is pretty far-fetched, as its something we still see on larger platforms like Instagram. I do agree that when we have such a clear incentivised system like Steem we have way too many bots and upvote buying, so I think if we all went a bit on the defensive like Hive account@grumpycat is doing we'll be able to better combat the issue.
I acknowledge that many people think the ability to buy votes allows smaller users to gain power more quickly and is, therefore, a good thing. I disagree; I think the current method of 'Delegated' Steem power is sufficient to get small users into the game with some time. After all, if it is too easy to hit the top of the market then we have a serious competition issue, which I think is really manifesting itself in the overwhelming amount of shitposts and nonsense comments on a lot of popular posts.