Why is inviting people to dinner no longer popular?

Have you noticed that in recent years, there have been far fewer invitations to host people for dinner? In the past, bringing a few good cigarettes to someone’s home, setting up a table at a hotel, and uncorking a bottle of Maotai could solve a lot of problems. Now, these kinds of scenes are much less common. Why? Has everyone got everything handled and no longer has any issues?

Or has society’s atmosphere improved—that is, people no longer climb the ranks, no longer take backdoor routes through connections, and instead make friends privately? Neither. Problems always exist, and the “transactions under the table” will never disappear. It’s just that what used to be solvable by having a meal together can no longer be solved that way—this is not because the trend shows that young people don’t love smoking or drinking; rather, the “relative value” of cigarettes, alcohol, and meals is declining, and there are more mature monetization industry chains. (When the necessity of cigarettes and alcohol as social mediators begins to decline, it in turn affects young people not to “have to” smoke and not to “have to” drink—this part is correct.)

Do people often hear someone say, “Who still lacks a meal these days?” What does that indicate? It indicates that in the past, it was precisely what people lacked. And for people today, the desire for food and drink is already something very cheap—no matter how high-end it is; when you want to satisfy yourself, you can satisfy yourself, so why sell resources just to swap them? Therefore, it’s not that people aren’t doing under-the-table transactions anymore; it’s that good wine and good meals aren’t scarce anymore and therefore aren’t sufficient as bargaining chips. After the deal is worked out and even more advanced resource exchanges are completed, chatting for a while at a teahouse or a café and casually eating a couple of bites can produce about the same effect as a big dinner. What we care about now is eating with “the right people,” and whatever you eat tastes good. So what are “the right people”? You judge that yourself.

Another point is that “everything can be marketized.” In the past, people would owe each other favors, and trade on face, and help each other—was it because they were less money-centered and more warm and human? No. It’s because they simply didn’t have safe, reliable, and quantifiable monetization channels. They had to store “goodwill” first—because there was no general equivalent and no mature monetization industry chain, they could only exchange goods for goods, or call it exchanging favors for favors. But clearly there is a huge value gap between favor and favor. So the less marketized a place is, the easier it is to end up with a whole crowd of people who seem enthusiastic on the surface, but in reality have a lot of ulterior motives, and people who like to morally coerce others. Everyone is very warm, everyone is good at helping, everyone is very generous—but they’re all holding something back, keeping IOUs of goodwill, wanting to use small things now to exchange for bigger value that others might be able to provide in the future.#BTC回调

What if one day, all transactions under the table could be quantified into actual money through some institution, some intermediary, some third party? Big or small, from inside a large company promotion—up to presidential campaigns—none of them are without an industry chain. Then let me ask you this: for an enrollment slot at a key elementary school, would you be willing to give it to your relative’s child, or to your friend’s child for a discount, or would you be willing to sell it to an intermediary for 400,000, with 200,000 given to you? You and the ultimate beneficiary don’t need to deal with each other. And if you give that 200,000 worth of favor to your relative, will they feel they owe you 200,000? No, because they didn’t originally have that budget. At most it’s just a few packs of cigarettes, a few drinks, or a few baskets of fruit around the holidays. So your best answer is, “I can’t really decide this,” and then you turn around and sell it to the intermediary, letting a child of someone you don’t know get that opportunity.

So, why dinner no longer works? First, because its value is now too low—what used to be useful as a stopgap no longer works.

Second, in modern society, if you have resources, you directly convert them into a general equivalent: the bids are transparent, the bidding is rigorous, and the resources go directly to whoever places the highest bid. You no longer need to rely on the fact that, because you can’t find monetization channels, power would expire and become invalid—so you can only wrap a fake shell of “favor and morality” around it when choosing from “those who come to seek you out,” selecting someone whose future exchange value appears higher, and temporarily storing your goodwill with them.