Having the ability to shower friends and family with gifts - and doing so - is a fundamental requirement for social status in every human society. The king who invites all the nobles to a great feast, the Hollywood socialite who hosts the most splendid post-Oscar party, the Pacific Northwest tribal chieftan who has the largest potlatch celebration, are all acting out this tradition. The latter may be less familiar:<p>> "A potlatch involves giving away or destroying wealth or valuable items in order to demonstrate a leader's wealth and power. Potlatches are also focused on the reaffirmation of family, clan, and international connections, and the human connection with the supernatural world. Potlatch also serves as a strict resource management regime, where coastal peoples discuss, negotiate, and affirm rights to and uses of specific territories and resources. (wiki)"<p>Distribution of resources within societies has historically varied quite a bit, so in the more egalitarian societies, the situation is more reciprocal, with people giving as many gifts as they receieve on average. Highly unequal societies end up with 'noblesse oblige' behavior as gifts tend to flow from the wealthy to the poor, which has been used as a justification for the aristocrat/serf system of feudalism.<p>These patterns of behavior are a kind of societal glue, and when they break down it tends to lead to revolutions and overthrow of the social order, as in late 18th century France, early 20th century Russia, etc. This probably also accounts for some of the failures of authoritarian state communism, as all resources end up controlled by state authorities (e.g. it's probably hard to throw a private party for friends in North Korea).<p>In terms of day-to-day living in democratic capitalist societies, people instinctively understand this dynamic and much of the awkwardness this article discusses relates to the fact that people are always keeping account of who gives what to who, even if it's just unconscious behavior. It also explains why inter-class friendships can be much more difficult to maintain than any other type, i.e. inter-faith, inter-race, etc.