I think the hyper business oriented, technology first view that is what HN typically has been is actually the exception.

Open Source, hacker culture, scorn of "the suits", the love of sci-fi and it's attendant politics -- the bulk of actual technical people have a long history of being very politically aware and deliberately eschewing money for their values. It was rarely Marxist Class-Conciousness type stuff, but it certainly was aware of the political environment we were in.