>> most social status systems developed organically from networks of trust, common experiences and mutually held values at a micro level like within a family, town, school, religious group

I don't see how size or organicity are useful factors to appraise actions by certain institutions as "unreasonable". If you have ever read the Scarlet Letter or the Crucible, those "smaller" centralized institutions (i.e. families, towns, schools, etc.) have played the part of censorious zealot just as much as the bigger ones.