Uber's model feels like it's trying to make the human driver into a robot. Until we have actual robot drivers, I prefer a system that has the tipping built in, e.g. Lyft.
More like the thought of being expected to fork over extra cash for a standard transaction above what I already expected to pay up front. The problem is that the idea behind tipping has been abused. The onus needs to be on the business owner.
People who refuse to tip are trying to prevent this abuse. Asking for employees to get a fair wage for the work they do should not be dismaying.
What's dismaying is how many people in this thread don't even want to have to think about how the person driving them is a human being, often just trying to make ends meet.
The problem is, this argument could be applied to all minimum wage workers.
Should I tip the cashier at McDonald's or Wal-mart? They're not making a living wage and are probably struggling to make ends meet. How about the guy that pumps my gas (I live in Oregon where it is generally illegal to pump your own gas)?
And that's what really gets me about our tipping culture in the USA. We're so inconsistent about who we think we should tip. It's completely arbitrary.
It is a tragedy of recent generations that people cannot even handle a simple decision of to "tip or not to tip" by themselves without going to some amount of "pressure".
We are indeed, a generation of sheep, who cannot be expected to make a simple decision all by themselves.