It does feel like a betrayal. We live in a world where money is the main thing that matters and it's increasingly hard to come by and you need increasingly more of it (these are all designed policies, not emergent behavior). It makes sense that people don't want to do things for free unless they already have enough money.

Engineers who remained apolitical are now surprised the politics is bad.

Personally I think we should at least discuss changing this system into something that is more sustainable. Money is main thing, because it was decided that private property is more important than people. People like Joseph Stiglitz show that there's no such a thing as an invisible hand, even though he still believes in free market.