[kqr]

I think we are talking about completely different situations since you bring up "higher rank".

I'm talking about an egalitarian society where one person suddenly tries to convince a band of friends that it's in their interest to close themselves off from the rest of society and try to extract value from it without contributing back.

There's no "rank" to be gained from refusing to join that band -- quite the opposite! You get to go back to a society that's free from rank.

[DarylZero]

"If you hire 40 goons to guard your furs, those goons could physically overpower you and take your furs for themselves."

^ At best they get to split the furs up among 40 people instead of 41.

(And if the 1 removed is actually doing any work, there's also more work to assign.)

There's little reason for any individual goon to think they're going to get a better deal this way. Let alone enough to compensate for the risk.

Removing the guy who takes "the lion's share" produces someone new to take the lion's share.

Unless they think they can do away with that entire structure. But then they have to believe they can change everyone's behavior all at once from collectively enforcing inequality to collectively enforcing equality.

The kind of social structure that makes this possible is the kind of social structure that the powerful person will make sure can't arise (by controlling information, removing potential leaders, etc.)

[kqr]

The premise of the question was "in an egalitarian society, what prevents someone from appropriating much of a resource and converting their possession to power?"

You seem to be approaching the question "in a hierarchical society, what makes it impossible for small bands of people to overpower the entire system all at once?" which is an interesting question, but a very different one.

[DarylZero]

Well, the premise is that there are 40 guards guarding one person's wealth -- which is a hierarchy. The guards are below, the wealthy person is above. And you were talking about what keeps them in their place rather than taking over from below.

I'm just saying that underling guards in general don't actually need to believe in the narrative the guarded elite uses as self-justification. Maybe they do believe it, maybe they feel obligated to pretend to believe, maybe it's all naked self-interest... regardless, what really keeps them in their position is the grid of power/interest.