Unless you're on dialup, you'll never have problems staying up to date. Keep in mind the first few years we were nowehere near filling blocks, which means the chain grew less than it could have. nowadays we are closer to saturation, so growth is a lot more linear.

As far as bootstrapping goes, it's insane to download the Whole thing from scratch through the core client. Look for a bootstrap torrent, and sync from there. yes, first start will be slow, but it won't take nearly as long.

All this said, nobody's ever said you need to run a full node. Wallets like Electrum, especially if combined with Trezor or other hardware wallets, are safe enough--indeed more in some cases--than running a full node.
there is no need to run a full node, and not doing so won't make you anybody's slave.

If you want core and contribute, you have more studying to do, because you simply havn't learnt enough yet to be useful.