And now they aren't getting paid enough, which gives incentive to the employees to demand actual wages instead of the bull shit system we have now.
Ah good, revolutionary theory to support not tipping.
Sorry to have to break this to you, but "incentive" for employees to fight back is not the issue when it comes to the power dynamic between service employees and enormous companies that employ them.
Don't get me wrong, everyone unionizing and having a general strike until tipped wages are abolished seems like it would be a better solution.
But this attitude punishes people already under massive stress for not taking on extra stress and risk getting fired for complaining in the hopes that eventually the system will course correct (with how many victims between now and then?).
Cultures shift through an aggregate of individuals’ actions, and each person refusing to tip in hope of moving to the system found in certain other countries is “being the change they want to see in the world”.
Additionally it is disgusting to visit a country and intentionally violate social norms, especially ones around paying people for their labor. If Americans want to change their culture, they can do that. Behaving selfishly as a guest in another country isn’t “being the change you want to see in the world”.
If the idea that you're buying this "service" from the waiter is implied, then surely I should be able to not buy it, but that's not really an option anywhere right? You can't go to a restaurant and pick up the food yourself from the kitchen and bypass the waiter. Even if the waiter is happy to let you, the restaurant owner wouldn't. So it's not like "don't ask for service" is really an option - the restaurant is the one requiring the service payment.
(I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your overall point, but this reasoning doesn't lead me to it.)
Pick up your food and go to a park, or choose a restaurant that operates on a different model.
You don’t get to dictate the service that an establishment chooses, you do get to choose whether or not to go there.
I meant don’t implicitly ask for service by patronizing places where there is no option.
And no, I’m not going to “declare my intentions to the wait staff”. Another feature of restaurants in certain other countries that I’d like to see brought to the USA, is minimal interaction with wait staff. At a restaurant I want to be left alone to talk the people I came there to dine with, and the inane exchanges with wait staff and their feigned positivity (which they feel obliged to feign because of the tip culture) are tiresome.
Again, wait staff have multiple avenues available to them should they wish to increase their remuneration, like political involvement to shape legislation and organized labor, without expecting anything from customers.
Stiffing waiters is shitty behavior, especially when you know the expectation, and withhold expressing your intent to act contrary to custom to your own exclusive benefit. Ask for them to include service in the price they charge you so you can protest without it being at someone else’s expense. In countries where tipping isn’t the norm the service is built into the price, so if you are going to skip tipping, make sure that you also aren’t skipping the behind the scenes changes necessary for that business model.
If you wanted to actually change things you would speak to management and workers and explain that you are trying to change the world and why.
How is a waiter or management supposed to differentiate your noble intentions from those of a selfish prick, seeing as how the actions and effect are identical?
This is a dodge of the actual issue at hand. If a person is choosing to patronize a restaurant and get the benefits of someone's labor, refusing to tip is wrong. The direct result is that the person waiting the table is unfairly denied a portion of expected compensation.
If you want to "be the change you wish to see in the world," patronize restaurants that have no-tipping policies. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
There is no implied service contract when it comes to tipping.
An implied service contract is a legally-enforceable contract. For example, if you went to a barber shop and sat in the chair and the barber gave you a haircut, then it is implied that you will pay for the haircut. Theoretically, the barber could take you to court if you refused to pay, and the barber would win.
A tip, on the other hand, is gratuitous. The server performs their service in the hope that the customer will give a tip, but there is no obligation for the customer to do so. If a server tried to take a restaurant patron to court for not leaving a tip, he would lose.
I don't think OP is advocating for not tipping at places where you're getting table service. Agree or not that's the standard arrangement and it's a total dick move to refuse to tip in that situation.
What everyone's complaining about is situations where you order at a counter and are offered an option to tip on the payment system. These usually default to having a tip selected, which means you have to change it to "0%" to avoid tipping for counter service.
Seriously though, please don't come to the US and stiff waiters at sit down restaurants of their tip. It's a bad system but that's the system and it's wildly unfair to the table waiter when someone decides they're not tipping due to some sense of principled resistance to the practice.
If you eat a table service restaurant and refuse to tip because you think the arrangement is stupid (which it is), you're directly harming the person who serves you by reducing their wages for the amount of time they spent on you. You're taking a philosophical stand (at best, at worst you're just being cheap) at the cost of a real person's income. This person who has no control over the standard tipping arrangement. Your protest does not cause any change and accomplishes nothing expect worsening the day of someone who provided you a service expecting you to hold up your end of the customarily agreed upon bargain. The waiter is not offered a chance to agree to this bum deal (and if you walked into a restaurant and said "who's willing to serve me with no tip to protest the stupidity of American tipping culture?" you'd be rightfully laughed out of the room).
That's why it's a dick move.
There are plenty of options for getting fed which do not involve table service, and if you want to protest tipping culture by not participating in it, you should patronize restaurants which either don't have table service or have a no tipping policy, rather than taking it out on low level wait staff.
The law does not require customers to tip, it requires employers to pay employees at least minimum wage if employees do not receive enough tips to meet the minimum wage requirements.