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Comment by pyrrhotech | Hacker News Reader

>“It’s making people less generous and chivalrous,” Ms. Pennoyer said. “It used to be you’d go to a restaurant, and you’d put down your credit cards and split it 50-50, even if one person had steak and one had chicken. But now people pay exactly to the cent.”

How is this portrayed as a bad thing in the article? This solution to this problem is the ONLY reason I use Venmo. Perhaps the author was always the one ordering steak and misses his old friend-subsidized lifestyle.

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> How is this portrayed as a bad thing in the article?

It takes some of the humanity out of the time spent together. Being generous with each other is part of how friendships and other relations are formed.

Among friends, boiling it down to a precise transaction is petty. If a friend is abusing this approach, that says something about both him and your friendship.

There are other countries on this planet that have long had the custom of paying for exactly what you ordered instead of splitting the bill 50-50. Near as I can tell, having lived in a few of those places for many years, the people there have plenty of humanity and generosity and lack pettiness.

I have had regular dinner with friends who liked to eat and drink a lot. Much more than I do. So I always ended up paying $50 while I myself consumed for maybe $20. Not once did any of the people who ate a lot notice that there were several people on the table who consumed only a fraction of what they consumed. Sharing is fine but I think it needs to be approximately even. You can't have people constantly taking advantage of this system and then accusing others of being cheap.

I have the opposite problem. On the rare occasions I go out to eat, I go out big and drink a lot and eat good. I get that so I always try to pay a bit more but everyone else will be like "oh no, we're just splitting evenly don't worry" and it makes me feel rude.

Luckily around here a lot of places have set menus and are all-you-can-drink including alcohol which simplifies things a lot.

What if you just happen to enjoy steak and your friend enjoys chicken? Then in the 50-50 split, you could be seen as "abusing" the system if you two go out to dinner often, yes?

A 50-50 split is never how it works out - you look at the bill and think "X spent about £15 and Y spent about £20, so we'll put that down and then make up the change between us". Or "let's split the food 50-50 and I'll get the drinks".

When I did not had much money, I consistently prefered cheaper option. 50-50 would mean that either my richer friends can not eat what they like due to me being there or I can not socialize with them as often. Alternatively they could pay more often, but it would be hard to keep that fair and I would not like leaching off theirs money either.

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