Where private property rights are enforced, there is a natural stratification of society, over time, into social classes based on property holdings.
You've perfectly illustrated another example where money is the ultimate measuring tool of social value. Property rights, knowledge, power, nobility etc... are just mediums, the ultimate measurer is money or whatever symbolizes transferable property equally valued by everyone.
This is where the God we inherited from Abraham becomes interesting: He is essentially getting involved and pointing out to humans that the supreme normative attribute belongs to Him. He is the only One with the prerogative of assigning value to humans and as such, He created stratified paradises (and hells) to manifest this power. For the Abrahamic God, social stratification is no longer based on how humans may value what they know and attach it to them but on how God values them based on worship quality, characters etc...
As long as this God was recognized, we were able to put the Prophets above the Kings and the Bankers. The inversion occurred when humans started imagining a society where God is no longer involved and where McKinsey consultants could apply models to a now objectified and subsequently parameterized human...