That's absolutely the case.  In fact, someone could probably make a good Ph.D thesis out of trying to create a model that identifies the "lower minima" in cultural/economic space. 

It's relevant to this discussion in terms of whether the world does or does not need a "global ledger." 

I think that a global ledger is an inevitable (and beneficial!) part of an eventual world society. 

When I think of all the crimes and losses that have been caused by misrepresenting financial information, and all the damage to society it has caused, it's heartbreaking.  And then I think of the possibility that there could one day be a "global ledger" where any such claim could be proved by producing a cryptographic key, and that the failure to do so should amount to abandoning the claim.  And I say hell yes.

Bernie Madoff says "I'm making 20% a year on investments!"  Possible investors, if they've learned nothing else, have learned enough to say "sure, show me the key." 

Jim Leeson says "I'm making risk-free investments and earning 18% in the Asian Markets, with no oversight!"  Barents Bank, even if they have been such idiots as to let him operate with no oversight, shouldn't be such idiots as to NOT say, "sure, show us the key."

Altcoin developers say "No, we're not dumping our premine on the market."  Altcoin holders already go look and say, "uhh, the blockchain monitor says you're spending it on something...."  And if the ledger were a global ledger they could go right on and say, " ... and if it's not going to the exchange, then you should be able to give us a key that demonstrates it isn't."  But alas, the ledger is not global, so nobody can tell what they're spending the premine on.

I look at a truly global ledger as at least having the potential to make a decent start on ending financial fraud, and I think that's a good thing.

But that's a "global" value, in that I regard the financial markets as being properly an open record.  Obviously the powerful or rich can spy on everybody's finances now, easily, pervasively, and routinely, no matter what we do.  So privacy as we have known it is effectively over, and now we're falling back on another principle which is equal access.  So by this new standard, obviously any attempt to prevent the poor from having the same power must be seen as an argument in favor of tyranny.  Welcome to the age of aquarium.  If we can't have privacy from everybody, then at least we shouldn't allow a select few to unfairly hog the information all to themselves. 

The "traditional" view of such things -- from back when people actually could somehow keep their financial records private and it required actual human effort and personal risk to discover them -- was that such effort was usually applied only by inimical forces and would-be tyrants, and has therefore a very different model of right and wrong w/r/t privacy over individual financial records.