So this is actually a reply to @huytersd post which I think had sort of an interesting potential angle on this I hadn't considered before and I want to steelman a bit more then the replies so far:
>Meh I hate tipping culture as much as the next person but you really can’t run, for instance a dive bar, and pay the bartender $15 an hour. The foot traffic doesn’t bring in nearly enough most of the time.
So I'm reading this as essentially observing that certain work roles are vastly more dynamic then others. If someone is, as the article describes, working flat out on their feet for weeks straight 8+ hours, maybe that should be $40/hour or more, many multiples of minimum wage. Conversely if it's an absolute dead period where mostly people are just sitting around (and free, and perhaps even should be encouraged, to do other enjoyable/productive stuff on their phones/tablets/computers), and the business is effectively paying for warm bodies to be there just in case, minimum wage would be fine. Tipping kind of, in a hacky way, could sort of capture this, where ideally if business is booming people get paid more (potentially lots more) and if not the wage automatically decreases. However, for all the excellent reasons everyone has pointed out in this thread and others, tipping is a pretty poor way to do it prone to abuse and failures. But a completely flat wage might not reflect the work well enough either in practice.
However I think we have a better model for this: sales commissions (be it direct, real estate or the like). There pay is also tied directly to the flow of money, but while not perfect it's much more empowering. The workers are agents. What if instead of tips the law mandated that businesses could opt into a model where yes they can pay a somewhat lower basic wage, but then 25% of all sales themselves went to the workers. Nothing for customers to think about, it's built into the price, but pay also then gets tied very closely to output and revenue. Business employment costs would naturally rise and fall with the revenue flow.
There'd still be lots of work for this, America's very broken health model ties in, other complaints as well. But I think that "certain industries would benefit from formalized protected dynamic pay while others are best with static pay" might have something to it, if more fair and empowering methods can be found. Though I'm no expert so there may be holes here!