And I'm generalizng the company store model -- in our fiat money system what HAS happened is that the closer people and groups of people to the fiat money issueing authority have come out over time with a considerable advantage in fiat wealth due only to getting first whacks at the "scrip" and leveraging of it.
It's not a distributed system ... it's a centralized system. That centrality, by some measure, is just like the "owner" of the mine and the company store.
I can only help you so far in dealing with the conceptualization of abstractions -- if you could drop the chip on your shoulder it might help.