I completely agree that surplus encouraged the development of inegalitarian, hierarchical structures - in some places and at some times, but as I gave one example, in Bali, the rice farmers ran on what was essentially a communal co-op. And there are many other examples of similar set ups with no significant hierarchy or inegalitarianism for a long, long time. This is why I opened with this sentence:

"What happens if we accord significance to the 5,000 years in which cereal domestication did not lead to the emergence of pampered aristocracies, standing armies or debt peonage, rather than just the 5,000 in which it did?"

Naturally, dominance hierarchies did eventually take over, and the arrival of Europeans certainly cemented that in the New World. Thanks for reading.