I suspect that present circumstances do actually necessitate Hive evolution towards natural societal valuations, or Hive will diseventuate. You're not wrong on any point you make above, but existential circumstances force the whales that have inherited the founders' position as the purpose of Hive either to effect a robust purpose for Hive, or it will be abandoned by people that need a functional mechanism to ensure survival.
It's literally an existential threat to humanity that we do not have functional society at present. Hive will evolve or die. You may be right it will not evolve, and I am continually faced with demonstrations of that refusal to evolve.
However, plenty of goodwill and understanding is possessed by devs experienced with Hive, and faced with existential threat today. I fully expect a functional platform to arise, because it is necessary to surmount the burgeoning threat(s) faced by society presently.
Very shortly people will not have interest in wasting time on the internet, but will need censorship resistant communications. If folks don't need it, they won't bother with it, and if we don't need communications, Hive will die.
It is possible to chip rocks and survive. If Hive does not enable society to maintain forthright communications but remains a mechanism to economically favor oligarchs, it will not survive cost/benefit analyses. I believe it can, but not without radical improvements, including enabling people to access it even though ISPs try to stop them, domain registrars doing the same, and similar censorship efforts.
Normalcy bias is going to kill a lot of people. Hive can survive, but only if it surmounts the philosophical deficits that presently effect governance.