I think, broadly, a less cynical reading is this; a universal constant might be that individuals within a collective will always tug and pull between distributive and accumulative resource management. Other species might experience an echo of our struggle filtered through their own conditions.
For as radically different as aliens could be I feel there's an equal possibility that they could be mundanely similar in certain ways. It's hard to imagine (based on our understanding of the universe) life evolving without natural selection giving way to evolution through competition and then pushing cognitive capacity by socialization etc. And if that path is typically followed I could easily see resource management being a broad filter for developing societies, wherein a struggle must be always be resolved where the collective is given priority. If not, the species is unable to reach a certain level of shared intellectual development for higher technologies/forms of society.
There would be exceptions to this of course, like the universe is infinite so there's going to be wildly different conditions giving way to unimaginably different societies - but I can see where OP is coming from and am kinda inclined to agree it might be a trend out there.