I read it recently, and it was a major influence, that passage. It's a bit too ambitious to describe everything we do as a species, so the book does get a bit stale partway through.

The central idea isn't wrong at all. It's quite clear that we've created a bunch of cultural shared "items" like the the limited liability corporation and such, which are useful but don't really have a physical existence. That doesn't mean they're easy to create or destroy either.