If you can have a stable consensus of who owns which (or how many) stones, why bother transporting the enormous stones across the country at all?

What's the purpose of setting them up in formation rather than just having a big pile? (To make it easier to spot if one has been stolen? But if you've got someone watching the stones then it surely can't be much extra effort for them to count them every day.)

[EDITED to add: Hi, downvoters! I see this is at -2. I honestly can't see what's wrong with it, so if this comment was downvoted on its merits rather than because I said something elsewhere that disagrees with your politics, please let me know what was wrong so I can improve. Thanks.]