It’s interesting that you don’t consider landscaping, juice bars, and wind surfing schools as beneficial to the economy. Could it be that these highly educated and intelligent people you are talking about see things differently? Perhaps after 5 years in tech they realize that none of the companies they’ve worked for are actually providing any benefit to society and are perhaps even a net negative. That realization is sure to produce instant burnout as the work you’re putting in is now meaningless or even harmful. At that point it becomes a rational choice to start a small business that provides some immediate benefit to people no matter how trivial.

I don’t think there’s a damned thing you could change in the work environment to fix that, it’s the work itself that is the problem.