This strikes me as a very likely theory. Once people have their basic needs met, a huge part of what they end up spending their money on is essentially social

This strikes me as a very likely theory. Once people have their basic needs met, a huge part of what they end up spending their money on is essentially social status. This societal strategy cuts out the middleman and just awards social status directly. It's also often been remarked that, for example, Silicon Valley is very lenient in terms of social status on people with failed startups. Conversely, in Germany, for example, a failed business is often considered a black mark socially, and you correspondingly see far lower start rates for high risk businesses.