The reason I say incentives is because all these other things are driven by incentives. Culture changes to accommodate incentives. For example, the entire chivalry movement was born from a dying cult's wish to keep their tradition's practices alive. They found a way to integrate their beliefs into Christian culture. Women found this particularly beneficial as it provided them better treatment so they were incentivized to reinforce men that played along. The men who played along were incentivized to adopt these practices in order to gain sexual opportunities. You can argue the same about genetics. You are incentivized to mate with people who have better genetics. Historians are incentivized to write the version of history most profitable to them or their governments that are paying them. Incentives are the driving force of our actions.

Power always won because, until Bitcoin, we never had a neutral property right that was sufficiently resistant to both seizure and surveillance, such that it could break the profitable, positive feedback loop of theft.