This seems a close relative to a culture clash I've experienced, which I'll call Pull vs. Push. It is well exemplified by how the culture handles passing food at the table. Note that the obvious ease of the task pretty much eliminates the guess/ask/tell distinction: "I'm out of rice", "Could you please pass the rice", and "I am out of rice and would like more" are all functionally identical.

I grew up in a Pull household, where, when you're out of something on your plate and want more of it, you ask for it. But my girlfriend's family is a Push household, where they notice when I'm out of something and offer me more.

There hasn't been any grief from this particular example. Granted, I completely fail to notice when anyone else needs something, and that probably annoys them, but it hasn't really led to any unpleasantness. But in other situations, my failure to push has gotten me in some trouble. I haven't really had problems with excessive pulling because I don't really do that.

My analysis of whether one culture is better is that pull ideally makes sense if reading others is difficult relative to reading yourself. The mechanics of requests could be potentially relevant, which couples this to guess/ask/tell. Pull also is much more convenient if favors exchanged are expected to be equal. Push, in contrast, lends itself more to everyone impartially increasing group utility. Of course, the latter is beneficial to those who need more favors.

So all told, pull is good for individualistic, autism-spectrum, independent types, whereas push favors communal, social, needy people. I expect most LWers to intuitively prefer pull (edit: I had mistakenly written push here), as I do; but I think the actual right answer depends on the situation and people involved.

(FWIW, I think push is ridiculous in the food-passing example. Watching everyone else's plates seems like a lot more work than speaking up when you need something.)