@toast I think there are a lot of good (and often under-considered) points in here.

But there's one specific thing that I think is important to call into question, and it's the notion that, paraphrasing, "human brains think in terms of transactions".

While this is true in the context of capitalism-driven cultures, this has not been true historically; over the centuries (and even today!), there have been a wide variety of different cultures with a wide variety of different perspectives on trades and exchange, many of them not of a transactional nature.

Thinking in terms of transactional exchanges is very much a cultural thing, not a 'human nature' thing, and it *is* a thing that cannot be overcome; it's just very difficult to do so in the context of a culture that is mired in transactional thinking, and you'll likely have to *build* a different culture within your project to change that.