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Why does advice work so poorly?

greyenlightenment.com
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I'm not willing to say it's an all around bad practice with gift giving.

As corvos points out quite a few cultures adopt a more transactional nature for gifts. I feel that even the standard American culture has some aspects of gift giving that feel more transactional in nature. Wedding gifts are often basically a ticket price for attending the wedding. I currently have young kids everyone buys cheap crap for each other's kids, and then gives out gift baggies of cheap crap for the party. The kids barely know each other well enough to buy meaningful gifts. They certainly don't have some idealized understanding of gift giving. Tipping at restaurants which is supposed to be a gift is often just an assumed revenue stream for servers.

Tipping isn't supposed to be gift giving it's supposed to be outsourcing the quality control of service provided to the lowest cost evaluator. That's why their base pay in the US is traditionally so low. Rather than having inconsistent service or having more management time/secret diners reviewing service and charging more for the higher wage/management cost.