Everything that we have, do, eat, wear has monetary value. People learn to live within their means, but still, it takes a certain privilege to say "life is more than just money".
I think the author is defining a bare, to-the-metal viewpoint. It's not the prettiest way of looking at the world, but it's hard to argue that it's incorrect.
It really only takes the realization there was a world before accounting. There is more to life than just money.
That is my argument though. Dominance hierarchies are one foundational lens through which to view the world, yes I agree. However, it is not the only one, and if you were to use that lens to try to understand, for example, my motivations and my life choices, you would come to incorrect conclusions. It is possible to interpret my life choices through the lens of ego-driven pursuit of dominance, but that interpretation will not lead to an accurate understanding. You can overfit that model to my life, but it will not have predictive power because it is fundamentally an incorrect model through which to understand my motivations.