It's an interesting way to think about it -- you may have heard of Dunbar's number which is basically the limit number of people that you can keep good track of socially. People argue about what this exactly is, and what 'keep good track' means, but whatever, the point is there's a limit, and it has a lot to do with neural limitations in pre-frontal cortex (principally), and it's not that high, ~150 or so.

I'm thinking about your "leaky bucket" analogy here -- when community gets beyond that size, there's kind of a "fuck it" effect, as investments in those social encounters won't pay off in the same way. A kind of social fiat without introducing money into the equation at all. But subject to some of the same limitations, maybe? Like, social life gets more fiat the bigger it gets ...

Need to ponder. Thanks for the prompt. Get some sleep, brother :)