Unless your neighbor is a gigantic corporate entity and the favor they asked was for you to spend a week dispensing your acquired skills with which you normally achieve your livelihood, then this seems like a totally unreasonable comparison.

> One time someone asked me for a favor. I thought it was unreasonable so I declined. I didn't realize this sort of thing was "abusive and predatory." I feel so victimized now.

This is uninteresting from my POV and against the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Be kind. Don't be snarky.

Please help keep HN interesting. Thanks.

You're right, I should have left off the last sentence. But words mean things. Let's save the description "abusive and predatory" for things that are, well, abusive and predatory. A voluntary invitation to collaborate does not meet that standard, regardless of its reasonableness.

Perhaps, at the individual level, you can claim that 'voluntary' can never mean abusive.

But this would be too simplistic. Many 'voluntary' relationships are abusive.

Think about the system implications and dynamics over time here. There are power imbalances and changing expectations. People rarely have the unfettered freedom implicit in your claim.

And, if you think beyond the individual level -- at the society level, one's analysis must go much deeper.