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> It costs time, effort, and money to provide better service, so I'm not from where you get the moral dimension of having to buy them. They have a cost; of course you have to buy them.

It's an odd industry where you perform a service, then hope your customer decides to pay you for it.

Variable compensation is widespread across all sorts of industries; tipping is just one (limited) flavor of it.

What other industries let the customer decide after the fact what (or if) they will pay for the service?

Babysitting.

(Obviously, you don't decide if you're going to pay for restaurant service; you decide only whether you're going to hold up your end of a cost sharing deal.)

What? I have not heard of a babysitter agree to babysit without also agreeing on a price beforehand. Where does this happen?

I definitely would not trust my kids with someone willing to accept that deal.

You generally tip babysitters (especially if you want them to be available in the future).

> Babysitting.

Not generally.

> Obviously, you don't decide if you're going to pay for restaurant service; you decide only whether you're going to hold up your end of a cost sharing deal.

Tipping is not a “deal” that you have committed to, by definition.

No? The price for babysitting is always agreed up front. At least, I never seen anyone babysit or have babysitter without price being clear.

Massages too (massage envy)

The tipping there is kind of stupid since they tip at the base cost of the massage even if you get a discount for the membership.

Probably going to cancel it given how expensive it's getting

As the meme goes, "that's a nice hypothesis you've got there. Be a shame if someone were to test it". If tipping fixes a supposed incentive problem that exists with tip-free service, than restaurant service should be better in North America than anywhere else in the world. Is it? Empirically, no. And even locally there is no gain from tipping: Seattle has several tip-free restaurants and the service is indistinguishable from the rest of them.

I consider obligatory 20% tipping as that weird American thing along with guns and (absence of) healthcare. People have elaborate arguments and discussions about them, and the side in favor can look very rational and plausible, and their hypotheses can even have a lot of explanatory power, but they are easily refuted by looking at basically every other developed country.

I travel a lot and eat out a lot and I haven't noticed any discernible difference in service between the countries with obligatory, optional and prohibited tipping.

That's interesting you consider tipping an American thing, I'm guessing you aren't very well traveled as you clearly haven't been to Canada or the Middle East.

There are certainly places without tipping, with much worse and much better service than America. Why? It's cultural (duh). And in American culture, you tip mechanically if you can afford it and your experience wasn't notably incredible or terrible.

In some places, it is acceptable to raise your hand and call for service. In other places it is not. If you know that it not acceptable, and you do it anyways, you're sort of an asshole. It's the same with tipping. You're not some iconoclast who will personally change the culture.

> Servers have competing incentives: to serve the interests of customers (better service) or the business (reduce ongoing costs). Tipping shifts the incentives around.

If that were true, we'd empirically be able to observe better service in countries with a tipping culture than in those without.

In my experience, that is not the case at all.

I don't want to start a nationalist flame war here, but: you and I should agree to disagree on this one. (Austria was lovely, though, from one end to the other.)

It is not, for what it's worth, my contention that tipping is the only way restaurants can work, or even the best one; only that it is a rational system.

> [...] it is a rational system.

I don't disagree on that, and I can see both how it developed and why some people prefer it.

But as a participant in interactions where tipping is expected, I very subjectively find it somewhat exhausting. I'd happily pay more, on average, and be rid of the (albeit small) decision each time.

> Austria was lovely, though, from one end to the other.

What gave me away? :) I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope you did tip – contrary to what some guide books say about Germany and Austria, tips are very much expected, although at a different percentage than in the US. (Coffee house waitstaff in the latter being rude is to be expected regardless of your tip rate – supposedly it's part of the charm.)

Regarding my experience with non-tip cultures, these are mostly limited to a few countries in Asia (where waitstaff will at least anecdotally follow you onto the street, returning your tip/accidental overpayment).

Nothing gave you away: Austria (particularly Vienna, but also Salzburg) were simply the examples that jumped out of my mind as the best service experiences I had in Europe. We tip everywhere, even when it marks us as obnoxious Americans; we're well (over)trained by our culture. :)

What you're saying here, about tipping being exhausting: I don't deny that at all. I can absolutely understand the preference against it. And: Japan is a good counterexample: very good service culture, no tipping.