[judk]

Indeed, self-promotion is an obvious byproduct of democracy and bottom-up economy, where the population at large chooses winners (through voting or market force$) , instead a top-down command economy where everyine is rated by fixed measures, or a caste society where privilege is hereditary and no one gets promoted or demoted, so no one needs to impress anyone else.

[nfoz]

Self-promotion is an obvious byproduct of a highly competitive society in which actors need to struggle against each other in order to survive, rather than a more cooperative society where there's less pressure to survive and less pressure to get as far ahead as possible.

[judk]

Would love to see such a cooperative society in this universe. I guess ants and bees have that?

[nfoz]

Societal competitiveness vs. cooperation can be observed in the differences between human cultures, even similar ones. http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/nc.htm does a good job contrasting cultures in this regard, iirc. Moving to New York from Canada, I was quite surprised how much more competitive people were, even about things that don't matter. It's just there.