I would not expect the libertarian-minded John Tierney of the New York Times to give a full, thoughtful account of the social dynamics of potlatch on its own terms, and indeed, he doesn’t. In his article in the Science Times section of the Times (December 16, 2008), he uses the potlatch practices of the Kwakwaka’wakw Indians chiefly as a pretext for some irreverent, superficial riffing on the meaning of gift-giving. His editor surely wanted something seasonal. (“Potlatch” is the ritualized gift-giving that many indigenous cultures practice, and which have long been studied by anthropologists.)
That said, Tierney’s piece is worth reading if only for the interesting reader comments that it elicited. Readers compare government redistribution to potlatch, recommend Lewis Hyde’s book, “The Gift,” note that open-source software “hackatons” are a contemporary form of potlatch, among other provocative insights into gift-giving norms.