Not only is it reductive, but it’s also a rather lacking analysis in terms of richness.
As you say, territorialism and social hierarchies is common.
Animals don’t value each other on the basis of their bank accounts, and neither did humans.
Money and wealth are fairly modern concepts. So are nations, but the point I’m trying to make is that we divided land into territories long before wealth had anything to do about it.
And while having territories definitely cause some issues it also creates a common cause. If it’s your household, your neighborhood, your municipality, your county, your nation, or your continent.
But as always, the further close to home the more engaged we are. You are more invested in keeping your house clean than the street outside of it.
Democracy works the same, and it works better on lower levels. On national levels it seems to work less and less.
Welcome to modern CV-padding.
Write a blog post about something (basic) you did.
Never mind that you just did it to have something to write about.
Go to conferences to talk about the blog post.
And the next time you change jobs you can pad your resume with all this stuff as if it makes you special.
A lot of companies actively encourage this behavior to market themselves as to better attract candidates.
And then a lot of companies indirectly encourage it through both their hiring process and possibly even their job ads.
Now, don’t take this the wrong way; there’s plenty of good talks at most conferences. There are people blogging about worthwhile software projects too, but there is a high volume of low effort content which really doesn’t add anything.
I’ve even been on both sides of the argument I’m making. Stuck listening to someone who doesn’t really know the topic, and stuck giving a talk about something I don’t really know enough about.