Not necessarily. Consider what participating in elections does to validate the premise that competition is not only not a childish waste of time, effort, and material, but indeed a sound method of collective decision-making. Not showing up is the same as non-endorsement of the system. Those who are invested in that system will cry and moralize non-participation as apathy because they believe they and the system they husband are entitled to the enthusiastic and ongoing consent of the governed.

It is quite interesting to read up on some of the particular status games played by various tribal societies across time and the globe, and the kinds of societies that unfold from them. David Graeber's anthropological theory of value is an engaging survey of some of them.