> our current system makes people produce value for others in their chase for status

I don't think most of the people who have extremely high status are doing anything remotely close to producing value

They just own capital which they use to pay other people to produce value, which they then take credit for, which boosts their status

So it would seem that we're pretty divorced from the idea of "produce value -> get status" these days, if you can just pay people to produce value for you instead