Not really. 95% of the gas fees get burned and do not go to the validators at all. Only the 'tip' or 'priority fee' goes to the validators and even that is barely anything. Most of the transaction related income validators get is from MEV - basically bribes to order transactions in the block in a particular manner allowing arbitrageurs to extract additional value. These bribes are somewhat correlated to the level of the gas fees, but not always.
Since supply of compute is inelastic, it means that demand for compute fully determines fees + MEV. Any effort to scale the network would result in supply elasticity and would therefore cause fees + MEV to drop which would go against the interests of those who provide the validation service and earn the fees + MEV.
False until proven with sources. I'm involved with ethstaker and follow core development closely and have never seen anything like this.
The higher the transaction fees, the more validators earn. There is no incentive to build tech which will lower transaction fees, even though it would enable practical use cases. Ethereum community is not interested in value creation because they know that value creation doesn't pay. They can earn more money just monopolizing media attention, attracting new investors and lobbying (aka corrupting) politicians.
Having worked in the industry, I've witnessed how they literally suppress innovations which would result in more scalability and lower fees. They only embrace solutions that are flawed by design to create an illusion that they're trying. Billions of dollars are literally wasted just to maintain the illusion.
I don't know where all that money is coming from. The crypto folks are clearly right about one thing; the monetary system is broken... But they seem to be making more money keeping it broken than fixing it.