Gosh, davem, even as 'satirical dig', the whole paragraph is the on Angband of a textual evidence of 'social complexity' you seem denying the Hobbit whatsoever!
Would there be LoTR's 'heir and eight signatures in red ink' etc if not for messers. Grubb, Grubb and Burrowes?
(Funny aside fact: Gondolin is mentioned in LoTR 6 times. Gondolin is mentioned in TH 6 times)
But on the whole argument seems to go the way of 'which is more important - the egg or the hen' questions. Yes, without a hen there would be no egg, and hen is much more complex and beautiful and feathery and beady-eyed than egg may ever be, on account of not having eyes and feathers at all, but they are
both part of the same circle, and one proceeds from another.
Silmarillion was a beautiful hen, and it laid an egg, which is the Hobbit. I saw an egg, and out of it hatched a cockerel the LoTR is, and I was glad to see both, for the egg had a pearly shell, and the cockerel's song brought me joy, and I went and enquired upon egg's origin, and found the hen. Hen was beautiful in her own right, but I would not learn about her if she hasn’t laid an egg. Poultry keeper (that is, Tolkien) was proud of his hen, but when he discovered an egg one morning, he thought it was not his hen's at all, for A) she laid it over the night, B) he was sure his hen will never lay eggs,
but after few days, observing peculiar markings on the shell and its hue, he saw it was indeed egg of his hen.
Now stop quoting his notes of the first few days when he thought the egg was stealthily laid by some kind of cuckoo, and take a look at a cockerel hatched from it, or dare tell me again that cockerels are born directly from hens and eggs are not involved there somewhere in between
