It seems Bitcoin Core has embraced the digital gold narrative, which fails to achieve the original goal of P2P electronic cash. Do these developers really know better?
Bitcoin Core is a full clients wallet and not bitcoin itself. Bitcoin network is still decentralized. You can still transfer bitcoin to anyone anywhere in the world. Nothing changed that goal.
"I suspect we need a better incentive for users to run nodes instead of relying solely on altruism"
I will prefer if Satoshi has created some rewards for node runners. More people will have their own full node because if it is it is rewarding. It can be an amount of money that is lower than mining reward. But with node runners not having any reward, the network is still decentralized.