I recall a strong strain of activism to get hacking as an interest as socially acceptable, along with opening up compsec to a wider audience, and getting gov/corps to embrace this instead of treating all hackers as criminals.

I'm sorry if it disappoints you that people 'sold out' and it might feel like something of the original 'underground' scene has been lost---I genuinely get that. But experts who put in the time deserve to be compensated and making computing more secure is something that benefits society.