Autopiloting is a fact of life in high-security space. Manually piloting between stargates is an unpleasant task usually reserved for people with wars or too much time on their hands. This is true when flying industrial ships that are slow to align and warp, and doubly so for the unspeakably sluggish freighter class of ships.
I don't mean to put words in Lander's mouth, but I suspect the balance remark was in reference to region value. As in, having every nullsec region be equally valuable would be boring because there would be little in-game incentive to invade others' space. I halfway suspect that the drone region bounties will be superior to those found in other regions, based on this remark and developer posts on the forums.
You're quite right. I meant only that he had pointed out the in-game name, which is far less culpable. My apologies!