“He who dies with the most toys wins” is a rather cynical and sarcastic epithet, but some people seem to have taken this to heart. What gets an obsession like this going? Do the interlopers encourage this, and how do they benefit from this?

We would say the interlopers do not encourage this, and in fact will work many times to take away your toys to punish you. When you speak of having the most toys, the pitfalls here are made clear from the prior discussion, first of all, with the idea of there being a competition, a kind of gamesmanship, adopting a goal of outdoing your neighbor or others you feel you compete with, to see who gets the most in a material sense, perhaps in the form of luxury accoutrements like houses and cars, flashy clothing, lavish lifestyle adjuncts like expensive vacations, expensive automobiles, and so on. When the value you see in these is besting someone else who lacks the ability to acquire them, you are placing the material accomplishments above growth of the soul and using the wrong yardstick to judge true excellence. What we see as valuable are the intangibles of life. What one does in service, both to the self and to others, is the measure of you as a person and a soul-based being, and that is best measured with the nature, quality, and extent you offer love to others and express love in all you do, both in giving and receiving it, so you can reward others by enjoying and appreciating the love they send your way. Those are the truest accomplishments of importance that will have lasting value. Possessions and the surface trappings that are so often the goal of your culture are a false standard to rank individuals and their presumed achievements. They say very little about what is truly important, and that is, to what extent they are serving their soul and serving the light, both the divine and the human family, in what they do, how they spend their time and energy, and what it brings about for the betterment and greater good of all. That is a different kind of attainment than accumulating possessions, it is a growth of the heart to make room for more love.