Part of the problem is that hierarchical neighboring societies tend to absorb their neighbors.
But, I agree that one would likely need some technology to scale up the reciprocity system. Money and the free market is a reciprocity system of you squint at it.
Pretty much all the societies of today are the ones that could survive millennia of endless wars and come out of them alive. Current societal systems are selected for military prowess.
(This has various exceptions, e.g. isolated places like Iceland. But there isn't any big and pacifist state out there.)
