Does obligation from a gift fade over time? It does, and the speed depends entirely on the value of what was given. A cheap, low-value exchange like a social media like loses its pull in seconds. There's barely any sense of debt to begin with. But a real obligation can last a lifetime. Look at Ethiopia and Mexico. In 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia, and Mexico, a country half a world away that knew what invasion felt like, sent aid. Fifty years later Mexico City was leveled by an earthquake, and Ethiopia, a poor nation that had peaked financially in the 1930s, [...]