This is going to be a hard cultural nut to crack, the anti-potlatch of deliberately wasting resources to nobody's gain, just to show off rank and status.
We'll need anthropologists for this one, but perhaps this is a cultural nut which can't be cracked, because we're still wired in the way of apes and want to pile up our hoarded bananas for all to see to gain an evolutionary advantage... Short term advantages all too often dominate over the long term disadvantage in evolution patterns.
the destruction or sealing-away of goods in an intact culture is iirc more strongly associated with organised hereditary kingship, like the grave-goods of the pharaohs. he who dies with the most toys tries to take them with him into death, selfishly ensuring that no one else will have any use or benefit from them. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
It's the friggin' discount rate. "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
has hoarding behaviour actually been observed among the apes? I know that "exchanges" and gifts are well documented, with apes using gifts to sweet-talk their way into a new band or while courting a potential mate; but hoarding I haven't read about. the real shocker for me, a couple of decades ago, was publication of field observations of what looked like a lineal transmission of apparent status among macaques in Asia, i.e. the daughters of dominant females tending themselves to become dominant females. hereditary ranking -- afaik -- has not been much observed in mammals. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
