Hi Klement,
Nice study. I think this is a kind of Group Think Bias, to compete rather in similar ways as the neighbor competitor, and may depend on the personality type. According to MBTI I am a strong INTJ or independent thinker type. I never felt the urge to compete in the same ways as described here not even to compete at all.

Already from childhood I always strived to do it my way, as Frank Sinatra sang, best suiting my own needs and ideas and following this through school, career and live. At the same time I felt kind of pity seeing many others' urge to comply to obviously dysfunctional standards.

Mostly it brought me much more interesting opportunities, projects and partners to the envy of quite a few. In the current business trend to more innovation this increased even more and I run out of time more often but not of ideas luckily.

Thus, I can confirm your conclusions for real success to ignoring the Joneses. However, I do not have to force myself to that, but it comes naturally. I wonder if this is an innate personality characteristics of a significant part of the population, correlated with the MBTI type, and how large it is?