Why did civilizations start farming? The odds were heavily stacked against growing crops in the early days. It was far easier to throw a harpoon and feed your tribe for a week, or pick some berries on a nearby shrub and take the afternoon off. Plus those nondomesticated veggies tasted like total crap.
The answer is that hunter-gatherers are in truth just like us. They’re competitive, they’re status-hungry, and, above all, they’re individuals. In those hunter-gatherer societies that are proto-agricultural, the clusters of cultivated wild foods aren’t typically community property; usually they are owned by a particular family…that dispenses the harvest as it sees fit.
[...] A household might “give” food to a nearby neighbor, with a view to future reciprocation. [...] And families chronically in a position to “give” enjoyed chronically high status, like philanthropists.
—Robert Wright, Nonzero.
Reading this makes all the free stuff on the internet make a lot more sense.