I agree with you, actually. If you don't want to tip, fine, don't tip. But don't go to a restaurant and then not tip, either, because not only are you still giving the company money, you're shortchanging the actual person you want to help.

you are proposing that if we all stop tipping, companies will be motivated to pay their workers; you are correct, this is what would happen if we all stopped tipping at the same time.

this process is known as collective action. it is incredibly important to remember that collective action only works when it actually happens. in other words, your individual action of not tipping your waiter is ONLY beneficial to your waiter if you can make sure one else tips either.

do you have this power? (i think you don’t; if you do i beg of you to exercise it lol.)

now consider who actually holds the power here. at any point, your restaurant’s owner could institute a no-tip policy, thereby ensuring that no one has to tip, ever. several restaurants already have done this, and it works. now, you might (correctly) note that this may gives an unfair advantage to other competing restaurants who do not implement no-tip policy. this is where local and regional policy can come in to help coordinate transitioning to a more helpful model of compensating employees.

so there’s kind of this imbalance, where yeah technically it’s possible for us as eaters of food to “fix” the tipping problem, but its way way easier for the people in charge (whether that’s government or owners) to fix it, because they have the power of coordination on their side.

tldr, tip your waiters and advocate for anti-tipping policies if you want to maximize long term benefits for everyone.

If we don’t tip, where is the motivation to make companies actually pay their workers?