I think what you describe best fits with life after agriculture arose and there came an elected body who could maintain their power by redistributing others' wealth. But I sure get your point.
Hunter gathering societies were/are pretty much content to feed themselves on a day to day, it’s the people that wanted more that developed agriculture.
Assume you have a village and the village is divide into six groups of equal numbers to hunt and gather food.
Every day the 6 groups go out and every day the 6 groups return each with some food, but 2 of the groups return every day with more food than the other 4 groups combined. Everyone gets an equal share.
When times are good there may not be a real problem, but when times are hard the 2 more productive groups will say
“we can provide enough food for ourselves but we can’t provide for the other 4 that don’t produce as much”.
The 2 more productive groups can stay and starve with the others or they can leave and feed themselves.
The 2 groups that leave will take with them the superior skills that made them more productive and pass these superior skills along.
Some in the 4 groups that are left might survive, but they do not have superior skills to pass along so their society stays stagnant.
The same thing is repeated over and over again, the more productive leave as a means of survival because they cannot survive and also provide for the non or if you prefer the less productive. When they leave their superior skills go with them.
Finally one day someone had the bright idea “instead of searching all over hells half acre for this plant that gives me seeds to eat everyday, I will gather extra seed and not eat them instead I will plant some of these seeds in one place so I know where they are” and bingo we had agriculture.