I live and, mostly, ride in Surrey.
There certainly are a lot of blokes with money, flash cars and bikes, but honestly, so what?
If you are making an argument against rich people having nice stuff, fair enough, but it isn’t a mtb argument.
I get the point that over-crowded trails are annoying, but that’s really an argument against the sport becoming more popular.
I think one of the reasons road cycling has grown much more rapidly than mtb is that mtbers and the culture is a bit more spiky, less club orientated, dare I say it a bit more selfish.
I think there is also a valuable point to make about the consumerism in mountain biking. We all like nice toys, and, if I’m honest, if I had some spare cash going I would definately splash it on some new kit.
Equally, the industry does seem to focus a lot of its development on aspirational marginal performance gains which don’t help the average rider. For instance, I probably wouldn’t notice the stiffness gains of the move to boost, but if they could improve the durability of hub / headset / BB bearings that would be a big plus to me.
But, objectively, unless someone is slagging you off for having an older bike / cheap stuff (In which case they are a total loser and laugh it off) someone else having good kit doesn’t harm you, the harm is only in your head.
Frankly it isn’t the new golf – that is road cycling – but I would agree that like pretty much everything it is fairly fashion orientated and commercialised. Opt out of worrying about it.