I guess you need to decide whether you want to "Make a living as a folk musician, " or "Make a living as a folk entertainer." To me, music is music, and either you make a living doing it or not. Folk, by it's nature and the audience (or lack thereof) is undoubtedly more difficult to make a living at than some other styles of music.

Then you address whether you wish to entertain or just play. If you are a performer, you are playing a performance,and the large share of performances are to entertain. Some times we seem to look down on entertainers, like the"commercial groups" of the 60's. They had huge followings and still do. They played their brand of music, entertained up a storm, and probably reached more audience members and affected much more change than the obscure folk player that didn't want to entertain, just to spread his philosophy by his music.   I guess when I read the original question, I never once thought that it might be an option to not entertain... makes the $ much more elusive methinks.