Are we the baddies?

For some people, paying the premium to jump the queue is the point. What they didn't forsee is what happens when everyone has wound up paying the premium, and the queue is now with you again. This is mostly Australian frequent flyers, when it was a high barrier to entry it conferred advantages and now Fly in Fly out work has commoditised club status, there is next to no boarding advantage, and no points flight availability.

So yes. Status seeking, and differential price seeking probably is a-social as a pattern when it's weaponised against the consumer.

That said, I hated Uber, they actually offered to underwrite people breaking the law to get foot in the door (how that didn't get them excluded as a corporate scofflaw is beyond me) and they continue to export all the profits offshore, but taxi services had become shit and now we have got used to Uber and I just don't worry about surge pricing. I got boiled slowly.

My fellow Australians all feel a bit shit about the introduction of tipping in paywave and food service. That's unaustralian. We have legally enforced minimum wages and penalty rates. Turn that feature off.

The European push to mandate included luggage in flight is seeing a fair bit of trolling. So there are still true believers who think needing clean underwear is weak.

> My fellow Australians all feel a bit shit about the introduction of tipping in paywave and food service. That's unaustralian. We have legally enforced minimum wages and penalty rates. Turn that feature off.

I think non-Americans need to take a stand against this. Refuse all tipping. Its a slippery slope - I know these guys are underpaid but if you start tipping the wages will just drop and we're all worse off.

I'm American.

This is how capitalism is supposed to work. It's supposed to seep into every crevice of society and pull money out of the poorest, weakest people and into the hands of the richest and strongest. This isn't a coincidence, it is in fact the most important aspect of the system.

Tipping went from some generous gesture to recognize exceptional service and it's turned into a mandatory, arm-twisting shakedown by businesses that simply do not want to pay their employees. Not just avoid paying a living wage (those days are long gone) but not even a _minimum_ wage. Many people involved in or invested in the restaurant businesses wouldn't have thought about getting in if they had to pay employees for an honest day's work.

Many restaurants these days aren't just local mom and pop family run businesses but large corporations who own many franchises and operate in the billions of dollars yet people like you and I are expected to pay most of the wages of the servers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darden_Restaurants

Sure, you can never eat out or only eat at locally owned small businesses. But that's just one small slice of society. The only realistic solution for many of us is to try to run the rat race faster.

Just don't tip automatically, toughen up a little on the frowning looks and remind yourself that for one thing, you're not defrauding anyone for not tipping as an automatic thing, and secondly, its the cynical shits in the finacial incentive structure above your waiter who are really at fault.

This sounds good and like a protest but it's not because:

1. You're not hurting the big wigs who exploit workers. They don't care if you don't tip.

2. You ARE hurting the underpaid, exploited worker.

> You ARE hurting the underpaid, exploited worker.

What? No, you're not hurting anyone. You're going out to eat and expecting to pay for what you ordered, not the life subsidy of someone whose employer can't be bothered to pay them well enough. Either way, it's not and shouldn't be your obligation even if it does screw with the waiter's finances. I too might have financial squeezes that make it difficult for me to fork over an extra 14 to 20% every damn time I've already paid for all that I bought.

Your claim just keeps reinforcing the foolish notion that it's a consumer's fault/responsibility if wait staff aren't paid enough by their employers.

>You're not hurting the big wigs who exploit workers. They don't care if you don't tip.

And I shouldn't have to care if they don't care. At bottom, like I said in my point above, it's not my job to subsidize their wages either way. I didn't make my argument as a description of protest, instead i'm saying it as a practical thing anyone should and has a right to do.

> What? No, you're not hurting anyone.

You are, and it's objective.

Does this worker have more, or less, money than before? It's not a matter of opinion. The answer is less, and we know that's the answer because that's specifically what you're seeking out.

What you're arguing is if this harm is justified. Maybe, maybe not. In your opinion, it is. My opinion is that the marginal effects of me not tipping will have zero impact on the culture, so, for now, I play by the rules. The rules are stupid, I agree, but I still play by them.