Lack of wealth creation ability leads to zero-sum thinking (involution).

When a person lacks the ability to earn more money and secure greater survival resources by building or creating wealth, their mindset shifts toward zero-sum competition—the kind we call involution.
In simple terms:
If a poor person has a wealthy relative but cannot make money themselves, they will do everything possible to borrow from or extort that rich relative.
If poor parents cannot afford to buy a house or pay for their son’s wedding, they will pressure their daughter to demand a high bride price when she marries, withhold her dowry, and hand over the bride price to fund their son’s marriage.
If someone has poor education, a bad job, and low income—and thus cannot earn their own way while their family is also broke—they will try to make money through marriage. After all, there are only three ways to make money: family, career, and marriage. With no family money and no career prospects, marriage is the last resort. So they will scheme to extract money from it.
The playbook of zero-sum thinking is this: since I can’t earn money on my own, I’ll take it from people who have emotional ties to me—whether that’s a relative, a husband, or even my own daughter.
And this zero-sum mindset often operates under the guise of noble values—such as filial piety, family loyalty, or love. Even their parents teach them this way.
As the old saying goes, “When granaries are full, people learn propriety; when people have enough to eat and wear, they understand honor and shame.” Poor people don’t have love—they have calculations.
In the film Dying to Survive, there’s a line: “There’s a disease in this world you can’t cure—poverty.”
This is true. Because they lack money, survival resources, decent family conditions, and the drive to earn their own way, they will inevitably find ways to extract money from those around them.