Case in point, read the Old English poem "The Wanderer" (ideally in Old English but if necessary in translation) and remember that the relationship the narrator is lamenting is this sort of relationship.
The point is that gifts tie us together. As one person said, "obligations unite us, debts drive us apart." The idea that you give money and there is some sort of a moral obligation to reciprocate in some way (but not a quantified debt) creates the bond.
The way gift economies work is that you give gifts out and therefore obtain communal esteem, and people reciprocate to get that esteem by giving you gifts.
In general, if you can, reading a work in the language it was composed in is better than reading it in translation. It is generally hard to disagree with that.
The fact is that translation into contemporary English from Old English and Old Norse is deceptively difficult.
[1] wyrd bið ful aræd is probably the best example. It's usually translated as "Fate is wholely inexorable" which is not a good translation. "The turn of events is fully complete" is better, as would be "My fate has now been decreed" depending on how you want to look at wyrd (fate, but literally "that which has turned" and often personified as a woman) and araed (decreed, established, spoken).
Edit Changed the above OE to proper characters, and adding this:
While I am bragging, as you put it, about my understanding of languages I will point out that the structure there of wyrd becoming established through the spoken word is also found in parallel Old Norse traditions, where we have the description of the Norns in Voluspa ending with:
þær lög lögðu,
þær líf kuru
alda börnum,
örlög seggja.
This is again difficult to translate because of the variety of things lög could mean. "They laid laws" or They laid layers" or "They allotted lots" are all viable translations. My overall translation would be:
They allotted lots,
They chose lives
for the sons of men,
They uttered fate.
Back then, these things were evidence that the other guy wasn't going to knife you in your sleep.
It's the earliest form of debt-as-community-glue, really. It only survives today in the habit of bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner party, and in the handshake. We mostly rely on codified laws of hospitality instead (which govern restaurants and hotels).
The problem though is form. I am generous with my good fortune to you. What are you doing for me in return? It used to be that a gift demanded reciprocity (as would injury or misbehavior), and to be forgiven for not doing so was a bad thing and an insult to one's honor. Then Christianity came and we all got screwed over by this obligation to forgive.
Interestingly we know from anthropology that money came about as a way to quantify debt, not the other way around. So perhaps this is only less real today because of how we account for our possessions and how we relate to our money, not because of any intrinsic issue with a relationship based on disparity of this sort.
Interestingly Cicero brings up a similar point in his work on friendship. At a time where Roman society was very stratified and friendships were supposed to be between economic equals, he suggested that the best friendships would be made with people below one's social status, for the specific reason that they would be more loyal. Friendships in Rome were all about a gift economy (as they still are in many parts of the world today. I have a friend who studied with Edgar Polome for his PhD and said Polome used to use India as an example if this. He'd get a gift-- maybe a new wallet or something-- from someone one year and a request for help getting a job or a car or something else a few years later. And when he'd turn them down they'd be unhappy because it was not fulfilling his obligation for having accepted the gift. This is true all over Asia as my wife always reminds me never to accept a gift from someone unless I know what they want in return.)