In some isolated and probably anomalous societies sure, but greed-fueled expansion and growth is a hallmark of humanity across every single continent and at every stratum of civilizational development stretching back 10,000s of years

The noble savage myth is patronizing. And wrong.

Wherever you go, people turn out to be people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage

> Among native peoples, sharing seems to be the default.

Greed applies to more than just 'wealth'. Honour, fame/glory, and power are all things people that people strive for and are envious about:

* https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2002.htm

Even collectivist communities have a finite supply, or a hierarchy, of those things. Le Guin explored this in The Dispossessed:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed

I think greed just expands with the capacity to profit from it. It’s not that it didn’t exist in past and cause problems, it’s that our current systems reward it so heavily. I’m sure something as simple as our fiat currency, having most wealth as an intangible digit in a database, is a huge enabler itself. In past, if you acquired wealth you also had to protect it from theft and that was a significant burden itself.

Extreme poverty - by modern standards - is also the default among cultures with strong sharing rules.

This is not by coincidence!

We do still have the concept of people taking to much while people also greatly admire the vampires. It seems pretty obvious a culture could develop all over the spectrum.

Greed isn't the product. Greed is an inherent human characteristic (we'd all like a bigger house, more luxurious holidays, nicer car etc). The genius of Capitalism is that it channels greed to foster innovation, resulting in better and/or cheaper products, raising living standards.

it's too early for the noble savage fallacy