On top of that, the subpopulation of 30 y/o women I mentioned are the ones who are still single at 30. There are a good amount who didn't fully go the casual-sex route and skewed more towards finding a relationship: those are the type of people that my friends are dating. (Though even within an individual, it's not like people make an all-or-nothing decision between flings and deeper relationships: it's just a preference, and an ongoing decision about where to put one's energy).
As you allude to, I slightly switched the topic of conversation from "average men" to "my rich social circle". What I was getting at is that these same people, despite being pretty rich in their early 20s too, now have almost the same situation that women in their early/mid-20s have: lots of power in the dating market. The implication, to me, is that men who are more average in desirability will have correspondingly less luck but still experience that shift in power, as women their age who have fallen off the desirability cliff "settle" for them. I've noticed the same myself: I'm rich and I'm told I'm funny and reasonably good-looking, but I'm also not very tall; I did a little dating in my early 20s, and was in a long-term relationship for much of my 20s, but the last few years (late 20s), is the first time I've had a pretty decent clip of getting openly hit on by women without putting any effort into it.
I don't want to make this sound like I have it all figured out; it's just something I've noticed in my own experiences and the experiences of all my friends, and I have a model that explains it reasonably well (and comports with the broader science on sexuality that I'm aware of).
[1] It doesn't escape me how this sounds, and if I'm being honest, I find class-signaling to be pretty gross. But it's just a reality I've observed in the corner of the dating market that I have visibility into through my own and my friends' experiences.
They wrote a song about it.
City girls just seem to find out early
How to open doors with just a smile
A rich old man
And she won't have to worry
She'll dress up all in lace and go in style
Late at night a big old house gets lonely
I guess every form of refuge has its price
And it breaks her heart to think her love is
Only given to a man with hands as cold as ice
So she tells him she must go out for the evening
To comfort an old friend who's feeling down
But he knows where she's going as she's leaving
She is headed for the cheating side of town
You can't hide your lying eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you'd realize
There ain't no way to hide your lying eyes
On the other side of town a boy is waiting
With fiery eyes and dreams no one could steal
She drives on through the night anticipating
Because he makes her feel the way she used to feel
She rushes to his arms
They fall together
She whispers that it's only for awhile
She swears that soon she'll be coming back forever
She pulls away and leaves him with a smile
You can't hide your lying eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you'd realize
There ain't no way to hide your lying eyes
She gets up and pours herself a strong one
And stares out at the stars up in the sky
Another night, it's gonna be a long one
She draws the shade and hangs her head to cry
She wonders how it ever got this crazy
She thinks about a boy she knew in school
Did she get tired or did she just get lazy?
She's so far gone she feels just like a fool
My, oh my, you sure know how to arrange things
You set it up so well, so carefully
Ain't it funny how your new life didn't change things
You're still the same old girl you used to be
You can't hide your lying eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you'd realize
There ain't no way to hide your lying eyes
There ain't no way to hide your lying eyes
Honey, you can't hide your lying eyes