Pretending that there aren’t unwritten social rules around gift giving and obligation is disingenuous. There ARE rules and there are consequences for not following them. It isn’t about a transaction, it’s about the expectations placed on participants by others in the system.

It’s not depressing at all, it’s how our society works. Most people have no problem intuiting most of these unwritten rules, or are quietly taught by their parents or relatives.

The point wasn’t about transactions, but about whether or not the rules of the system are written down and accessible or not. Both social circumstances have rules.

If you come at it from the idea that businesspeople are cold and unfeeling sharks, and that everything is a transaction, then naturally you would think it’s sad and depressing that someone must apply rules in the workplace and rules in other social settings too. But that’s a vast oversimplification that misses the point: that business professionals carrying out a task directly and efficiently is neither cold nor unfeeling, nor is it some portent of a decaying social fabric. It’s simply professionalism.

Most working people aren’t professionals and have no desire to be, so it comes across as hostile and insensitive, but it’s not.

It’s perfectly possible to be professional and not come off in the way you’re describing as desirable.

In fact, acting in the way you’re describing is itself a negative social rule that will lose someone business opportunities. Because people with value that don’t want to operate in a coldly transactional environment will be turned off by it.

“I don’t owe you anything other than money for the task you’re doing,” is a good way to eliminate a sizable portion of potential high-quality employees.

The further up the economic chain you get, and the more relationship or service oriented the work is, the more important this becomes.

It doesn’t make you seem professional, it just makes you seem like a difficult person to deal with, and thus someone to avoid.