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Many regions of the world work just fine without tipping, so the difficulty would be in the transition. Have any cultures successfully made the transition from tipping to not-tipping?

Seems like the only start toward doing so would be to force minimum wage standards to be applied to all workers. This would benefit some but cause significant hardships to some others, so it seems to me unlikely to be achievable.

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Many regions of the world may "work just fine", but I'll put the service you'll get at an average priced sit down restaurant in an averaged sized city of the U.S. against a comparable establishment anywhere else on Earth. That's not to say there aren't friendly, competent staff everywhere, but at least my anecdotal experience has been that the U.S. and its tipping culture excels at providing good to excellent service on average.

The chief advantage of tipping is that it encourages people who are skilled at providing customer service to stay in the industry and those who are not to leave. Other feedback mechanisms might be possible, but they'd be much more complex.

What does 'just fine' mean? There is a large restaurant service disparity between the US and Europe.

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