[ben0x539]

I like the feeling of hanging out with likeminded people or friends and showing each other the cool stuff we're working on. Asking for (or receiving!) even nominal amounts of money makes it a completely different kind of interaction and puts me in a completely different mindstate.

In my experience, doing the math on monetary value of time spent on random activities or interactions just makes everybody sad and doesn't lead to better decisionmaking.

[fragmede]

Except that the various pieces aren't actually free, so it relies on people being rich enough, or things being cheap enough, to not worry about the costs, but someone's paying money. Being realistic and sharing the costs is better than pretending they don't exist.