The post does kind of explain that.

In the centralized world with a thin protocol layer that captures little value and a fat application layer that captures a lot, we see far, far more development in the application layer. When you invert where the most value is captured, you invest where the most work is done.

That said, all sorts of open source projects have shown that there are plenty of people willing to sacrifice their ability to capture value if it means they can produce even more value that is instead captured by users.