I think you both are speaking over eachother. You say on individual terms tipping makes sense and it does make sense in a vacuum like that. The other commenter is speaking in macro terms though. Having tips means theres less pressure to actually raise wages. It also fractures labor. You will have people getting no tips who really want higher wages and then people who are tipped well and comfortable with the status quo. This is a big issue with the restaurant industry; servers and bartenders in big cities might make most of their take from tips yet back of house struggles on the same base hourly wage since they aren’t tipped. Incentives are such that a high tipped server doesn’t want tipping to be replaced by wage increases sustained by menu price increases, since they will be splitting that now with back of house or less well tipped workers and will be making net less.
Well, from my first comment I have been speaking on micro terms, since I've been speaking for myself, an individual. I'm not speaking on the macro level because as an individual I have little power to make restaurants, say, pay higher wages, or Uber pay higher rates, or lower wages or lower rates. As an individual, whether or not I tip isn't going to change that one iota.
Now, if you want to talk about organizing collectively beyond the individual level, to use political and market power to make structural changes that raise wages but curb tipping, well that's a different topic that's worth discussing. But, absent that, I'm going to keep tipping.
