JavaScript libraries are a bit like office politics for front-end web developers -- basically something that feels like work and "advances your career", while in truth it's just a way to avoid doing the real work with actual customers.
That's pretty scary, if true. That sounds very analogous to academic research and the "publish or perish" state of affairs in academia today.
Office politics often will advance your career in any sizable organization. That's why people engage in it. If publishing libraries is an extension of that, then we should be worried about the precedent that's setting for software development as a whole (because it'd be silly to assume that this remains siloed to front-end developers).
Ehh I'm not really sure how that applies here, especially since the market of "javascript libraries" is probably about as free as you can get (in many senses of the word).
There isn't much going on in the way of financial return in that market, probably because people are seeing the benefit of implicit financial return (via the "office politicking" we're discussing here) and banking on that.
In which case, I'm not sure how capitalism will help.