[bumby]

I understand the mechanism. I don't know that I think it makes a large pragmatic difference as long as the pay guarantee is there but it seems a convoluted system as opposed to an immoral or unfair one.

I think where we may disagree is that my main concern is that the employee makes that minimum threshold, whether paid directly by the customer via a weird quasi-voluntary tax or by the employer who would presumably pass that cost on to the customer. Again, assuming it all gets claimed in income I don't see any shortfalls; it's just a weird convention.

Where I may have a problem is that there seems to be some evidence there is bias in tipping. I've seen some that indicates some race groups/protected classes are tipped less, controlling for service quality, even by their own race/class. If true, it would mean tipping is a de-facto form of discrimination and obviously needs to go away.

[dheera]

> as opposed to an immoral or unfair one

I would consider unethical when the result of me tipping vs. me not tipping is the same outcome for the driver. If it is advertised as a "tip" box, it should result in exactly that amount of gain to the driver than if $0 were entered in that box. How much you, the corporation, pays, should never depend on what I fill in for the tips.

Also, if the company can pay $15, they should pay $15, and recruiting me to pay part of that $15 under the guise of "tips" is unethical IMO. Call it a delivery fee and charge a fixed amount.

If you are asking me how much extra I want to pay in tips to a driver (10%, 15%, or 20%), I would be sympathetic to gig workers, because you're an asshole for paying them a $1 base wage.

If you are asking me how much extra I want pay to your asshole corporation, the answer will always be 0%. I don't want to pay any extra to your corporation. Name your lowest price that would keep your company afloat and I'll decide if I want the service or not.

[bumby]

>if the company can pay $15, they should pay $15

This doesn't hold unless you think profits should be driven to zero. Any profit would mean an additional wage being withheld. I may not understand the dynamic here, but my understanding is that tip laws ensure that if the employee comes in under $15, the company makes up the difference.

I've alluded to it a few times, but I think we disagree in that tipping is a quasi-voluntary tax. A tax is a fee paid to subsidize a service. That tax, in this case, subsidizes fare charges by reducing overhead labor costs. If you want to not tip, you should pay a higher fare because otherwise those who do tip are subsidizing your ride. I don't think it's unethical just because it's called a "tip" unless you assume people don't understand how the tipping system works. If your claim is it allows a corporation to make an unfair profit, I'm not sure I'm tracking the logic of that argument because the tax in this case is entirely voluntary. Where I have an ethical problem is when wages are suppressed so much that the public must subsidize employee wages in the form of government benefits. In that case, non-customers are subsidizing the company profits; since they are not consumers of that company, it makes it a compulsory tax to protect their profit. This is entirely different than a voluntary tax on those who use the service.

Personally, I would prefer tipping in general to be banned because it's a clunky, inefficient system. It's much more transparent and straightforward to just have a fair wage without all the game theory that comes along with a convoluted system of tipping.

[dheera]

> Personally, I would prefer tipping in general to be banned because it's a clunky, inefficient system. It's much more transparent and straightforward to just have a fair wage without all the game theory that comes along with a convoluted system of tipping.

100% agree with this.