In fact most of the devs I know that started pre-2017 deeply care about these things. Many were around in the OWS groups back in the day, they transformed via bitcoin and now mostly work on eth projects. The cool thing is most of those people who were in it for political reason (rather than the newer investors looking to make quick money, and new devs looking for decent paid job) have made enough money to spend the rest of their lives working on this stuff regardless of it making them any richer.

I think we can outwork and outlast the cynics and keep building the things we think are cool. they hype will come and go, the fraudsters will sweep in during mania and con people regardless of our warnings, the authoritarians will try get the state to make it illegal, the google employees will keep complaining that its not innovative. we'll keep on working towards what we think is right.