> Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home
  > hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting
  > expedition, he found one of the successful
  > hunters dropping off several hundred pounds
  > of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man
  > objected indignantly:

    > "Up in our country we are human!" said the
    > hunter. "And since we are human we help
    > each other. We don't like to hear anybody
    > say thanks for that. What I get today you
    > may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by
    > gifts one makes slaves and by whips one
    > makes dogs.

  > The refusal to calculate credits and debits
  > can be found throughout the anthropological
  > literature on egalitarian hunting societies.
  > Rather than seeing himself as human because he
  > could make economic calculations, the hunter
  > insisted that being truly human meant refusing
  > to make such calculations, refusing to measure
  > or remember who had given what to whom

  -- Graeber , Debt: The First 5,000 Years