Personally I also find it exhausting to have to judge every single service I get. So I just tip a standard amount, there’s absolutely no feedback involved. So there is no point.
There are lots of downsides with very few upsides.
For situations that aren't codified into law like that, it can more legitimately be modulated according to how the service made you feel, from zero to "keep the change" to a couple bucks to sky's the limit.
The former should be solved by abolishing tipping. The latter should be solved by technology that's somehow as frictionless as cash.
The law does not allow for sub-standard wages, however. If everyone stopped tipping today, wait staff would get the same minimum wage as any other job.
However, I think the point being advocated in this thread is that businesses should have to pay minimum wage (before tips). That said, it would be interesting how employers would respond if that was required by law - since removing tips would not save the employer any money, I wonder if that would result in less hiring.
Generally, restaurant prices are higher (minimum $25 per meal per person without alcoholic drinks), but tipping is still expected by the waiters for waited service. Bottom line is waiters earn more money, but possibly fewer people can afford to eat out and maybe there are fewer waiters overall.
I dislike waited food service anyway, I much prefer to just buy at the counter and bus my own table, and it might result in more restaurants like that.
Not only will the personal service be minimal, but the only part you can even judge at that point is how well they took your order... who knows if something will go south! So it's clearly just about keeping menu prices artificially low.
If it was not there, then depending on who I was with, I would either walk out or eat the cost and then never go back and leave a review that says they bait and switch pricing.
Tipping is about price segmentation / discrimination. Good for the seller, bad for the buyer.
If an employee lets their employer know they did not earn enough tips to meet minimum wage, then the employer must pay them more to ensure they get minimum wage.
Also, in many jurisdictions of the US where the same minimum wage applies to traditionally tipped employees, the tipping dynamic has remained. For example in California, Oregon, and Washington, the cultural expectation is that customers will still tip waiters, even though the waiters are earning the same minimum wage as everyone else.
Clearly, you have no idea of how the moving industry works. Everybody's a contractor of a contractor of a franchisee. The person who picks up your stuff is not always the person who delivers it.
When I move (frequently), I make sure to tip each person packing my stuff $50, each person loading my stuff $50, and the driver $100 for < 1,000 miles, or $200 > 2,000 miles.
Lifting and carrying and handling other people's prized possessions isn't an easy job. This is how I show appreciation when the job is done well.
It's really no answer to say I need to understand how each industry works.
Why would I? And why should I? It's the government's responsibility to understand the nuances of, and regulate, each industry.
Do we really want to live in a world where consumers need to understand the detail of how each industry operates so they can ensure sub-sub contractors can be remunerated appropriately?
Regardless of how you personally feel about US wages and the 20% I already prepaid for tip through the company to them, to be able to send money to others would be useful.
There could be other cases besides tipping.
I think an on-the-ground solution that caters to the long tail would be the only thing that would basically survive. Everything else would succumb to social forces and basically just fizzle out.
AirDropping Apple credit could be an interesting pilot study, but I doubt Apple would do something like that sadly :/
I'm talking museums asking for donations. To street performers in the tube. They're everywhere.
For context: I don't know if they're a thing in the States but in most male toilets in nightclubs (and more 'clubby' bars) in the UK there's usually an annoying guy in the toilet who turns off the hand driers and gives you paper to dry your hands whilst passively aggresively demanding a tip in return for a lollipop or a spray of various aftershaves/deoderants.
I totally agree.
At a parking garage the other day, there was a long line of people trying to get their cars back from the valets because one person was trying to tip with some random app.
"Oh, you need to download this. Yeah, open the App Store. Then download it. Yeah, it take a while. OK, now sign up. --five minutes elapse-- OK, now what's your username so I can send you the money? Did you say 'e' or 'v?' Was that '4114' or '1144?' OK. Sending now..."
It took like ten minutes.
I know that would open them up to lots of KYC requirements, as well as require them to do some of the evil things that financial laws require (eg. tracking all payments, closing accounts and banning users for certain things while not being able to tell the users why, freezing users money till they can present documents they don't have, etc.)
But it still seems worth it to take over the payments space from venmo, cashapp and paypal, make the wall to switching to android a little taller, etc.
"Teach a man to fish," they say, and I believe I did it on that day. I encourage everyone else to do the same.
> By the end of the exchange, they were both very happy with the arrangement and thanked me profusely for setting them up to use the future of currency, although I was still in the process of explaining its importance.
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...
This is satire, right?
I also had movers, and wanted to tip them. When I asked what they took. I was shocked when they said Bitcoin!
They said some person that they had helped move before had helped them set up bitcoin addresses.
They were so excited by this. It was also pretty easy to convince them to read me both their public and private keys for those addresses (I told them that if I sent it to their public key, it would be public so their boss and the IRS would find out, however, if they gave me the private key, it would be completely private).
I then tipped both of them $50. They were so overjoyed.
Then later that night, I emptied both of their wallets.
(By the way, to the OP, thanks for teaching them about cryptocurrency, and for the $10).
/s just in case anybody is confused
My bank is digital, it doesn't have a local branch, and most ATMs around me dispense cash in $20 bills. So I can make a small purchase near the ATM if it's in a shop and then ask them to give me change in smaller bills, but usually there's nothing I want. I don't have a local branch to drive to, but maybe other banks would help split bills? It's not awful, but it is pretty inconvenient.
Of course, the way to fix that might not be for everyone to standardize on iPhones, it might be to just have more ATMs that dispense smaller bills. But I do see why someone would find tipping primarily over, say, Venmo preferable, even though I don't think that appeal is enough to outweigh the benefits of cash tips (privacy, universal compatibility, simplicity, etc) in many situations.
Or I could just start tipping everyone everywhere in increments of $20 bills I guess, but I'm not that generous.
----
[0]: assuming you did actually mean it as an analogy for dropping cash for digital payments
If I was a bit more consistent about occasionally just paying for something normal with cash it would possibly be more sustainable, right now I usually try to break apart small bills specifically when I'm completely out of them or when I know I'm going to need to tip someone in like an hour.
Also yeah, having a stockpile would probably be a good idea, since right now I typically only keep enough small bills to get me though my immediate tipping needs and no further, so any surprise situations mean I'm immediately out of small bills and can only pay for things by card.
Regardless, definitely more management than I would like to do, so I get why people might want a system that doesn't force them to think about that stuff at all. It's just that the alternative digital systems come with other downsides.
Let's not turn hn into a discord channel about how crypto is going to disrupt all the things and make them more "decentralized" by having "federated exchanges" that allow you to "stake" your assets where, otherwise, it would be impossible to form a "liquidity provider" since, of course, without it why would you even want to live.
I'm surprised all you got was a "Bless you, bless you" response and not a shiv or a fist sandwich.
What specifically did you have them set up?
What happens when you tip that fiver away? You have to go to the ATM and replace it.
It's been years since I've carried a wallet in my pocket. When I go out I have my keys in one pocket and a phone, whose case has a slot for a credit card in it, in the other pocket. I never have my debit card with me, and my memory of the PIN keeps getting rustier. The barrier to getting cash and then carrying it around keeps getting higher; and it's rare that I have a problem from the lack of it.
There have been many instances over the years, even just in the U.K., where small and large stores have been unable to accept digital/network-required payments and ended up with massive queues or customers abandoning shopping carts full of items due to not having cash.
"Spar cyber attack hits more than 300 convenience stores" (2021-12) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-59554433
"Manx Telecom broadband outage affects 4,000" (2020-08) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-53920785
"Wirecard: 'It’s really bad. I’m left with nothing'" (2020-06) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53222181
"Debit card glitch means thousands charged twice" (2018-09) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-45400234
"Visa (Europe) says service returning to normal" (2018-06) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44335804
"Asda card machine fault leads to queues at checkouts" (2016-10) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37815973
"RBS says it has resolved debit card computer glitch" (2016-10) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-37658559
"Lloyds Banking Group says card problems sorted" (2014-01) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25907000
"Card payments system crash disrupts shoppers" (2010-10) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11458962
Also, interesting and somewhat unexpected contactless from long distance!
"Contactless 'charging errors' at Marks and Spencer" (2013-05) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-22545804
There are problems with any system. This one has the advantage of convenience.
I keep an emergency $20 on me going back to the early 1990s but I've only ever needed to spend it once in almost 30 years.
I live in a capital city in Europe and I hardly ever have cash at hand because EVERYONE accepts credit cards, I can even go days without reaching for my wallet because of NFC.
If I want to give you $1, I hold my hand out and there it is. I can literally stuff it into your back pocket. You're not involved in the exchange, there is no exchange.
We can even do it UDP style - imagine that I check out of a hotel room and leave a dollar on the bedside table for the room staff. There's not even an ack.
By contrast this involves me asking if you have an iPhone, and then asking if it has this feature, and then we both get them out, and then I type in an amount, and then we tap. We'll just assume that it works perfectly first time. Maybe you need data, maybe you don't. It's not everywhere, basement of a bar, long distance train comes to mind.
It's not rocket science, sure, but it's way more complicated.
In the UK I can send payments using online banking. If I already know the payment details of the recipient, then sending a transfer is approximately the same level of convenience as cash e.g. I just choose the amount and press send. But the initial setup is far more onerous.
It's only simpler if you're a cash refusenik for whatever reason and so you first inject the whole "well then I had to go to an ATM". The equivalent would be like me saying "well first I had to get an iPhone", obviously that would be unfair.
It's not anywhere near as complicated as you're making it out to be. Those saying "I had to go to an ATM" are simply voicing a legitimate downside of cash that this doesn't have because you only have to get an iPhone once whereas you have to go to an ATM/bank every time you need cash.
I'm at your house and I've just done a thing for you. You want to give me some money.
This is the protocol: "Hi, can I pay you for this?" "Sure." "Do you have an iPhone?" "Yes." "Okay, here you go." <writes numbers in, taps phone>.
This is assuming I actually have one. Otherwise you have to do a fallback method.
Contrast with the protocol for cash:
<reaches into pocket, counts out $x, hands over $x>.
It's the same amount of effort as the very final step of the other protocol.
There is no fallback here because I can guarantee that I have cash.
The whole thing is just obviously overcomplicated. If you like cards and phones and stuff because they're techy, that's cool man. I like tech too.
But it's utterly false that they're somehow simpler or more convenient. They work in some specific golden paths whereas the only case in which cash doesn't work is online.
The whole ATM problem you're describing is also super contrived, you may as well say that baked beans are difficult to eat because every time you eat one you need to buy one. Well sure, but you don't buy them one by one do you.
And it's not as if the only place a person gets cash is an ATM, everyone who I pay or who pays me has just gotten cash from.... not an ATM.
I dunno man, whatever, this is just a really weird thread in general, it's like you're treating cash as this magical archaic thing Grandad used to use when to me it's an integrated part of my everyday life.
Is this one of those "Cus COVID" things that don't actually make rational sense but apparently loads of people do it now just "Cus"?
To get money, I have to drive to an ATM and pay 1-5% fee to convert my money from bits to paper. Fortunately I have a bank that refunds ATM fees.
The point of this thread is that we are one step closer to making your first scenario "Hey let me tap you the money" and that's the end of the discussion.
For example, I recently had movers. I went out of my way to get a cash tip for them earlier. It would have been nice to skip that and just ping it at them somehow without awkwardly saying "Hey friend do you have Venmo? Apple Pay? CashApp? I'd like to tip you. What's your phone number?! Let me get that, thanks, bye, delete.".
This is NFC and a bit different but just my thoughts.