I've done some work on ethereum applications and have even written some protocol code (it pays the bills while I work on a non-crypto project)

Even I think bitcoin is a massive waste of energy, as is mining precious minerals that are only used for vanity purposes.

Considering the system-wide effects of an action is absolutely a hacker mentality.

The early bitcoin devs were hackers, sure, but the true hackers then went on to solving the optimization problem of providing tamper-resistant consensus without burning unfathomable amounts of energy.