> For sit down restaurants, or many service oriented jobs it makes for a better customer experience.

In my personal experience, it makes it worse. They annoy me with attempts to be ingratiating. They fish for tips with forms and devices which creates awkward and unpleasant situations, especially if I didn't like the service. There is nothing pleasant for me about having someone watching me and trying to guess when I want something. I know when I want something and I am perfectly capable of telling them when that moment comes.

> You ought to try sitting down in a restaurant in the EU. They do the bare minimum to serve you.

I live in the EU and I find the service at restaurants a hundred times better here. Nobody is pestering me, nobody is insulting both of us by pretending to be my new best friend. They stay out of my way until I ask for something.

I disagree, I prefer the service in EU - I like the bare minimum. I hate in the US when they take your order as soon as you arrive, they check every 5 minutes if you're OK then whip away your plates as soon as you finish the last mouthful.

It does not mean better service. For example, no tipping in Japan, but sit down restaurants are perfectly pleasant.

To provide some additional (counter) anecdotal evidence - I moved to Melbourne several years ago and can't recall a single, bad service oriented experience at a restaurant here.

I used to think that. Then I lived in Japan where not only do they not tip, they refuse tips. Haven't seen any issues with the service.

So no, tips do not promote a better customer experience.

My experience in restaurants all throughout the EU is that service is perfectly acceptable. I really intensely dislike over the top service - I want the employees to be polite and friendly but not to fawn over me - I want to feel that they're my equals in a social sense, not servile (but that doesn't mean they shouldn't respond to complaints etc.) I guess I'll have to take a trip to the US to see the difference in expectations.

> Do you think it's somehow more altruistic to provide subjectively uglier individuals the same wage? Bias based on attractiveness is no worse than bias based on personality or any other trait. Your point is moot anyway, in a capitalistic society people can just choose to visit another business where the staff has the traits they desire.

Your point seems to be that there is no inherent moral good in distributing resources equally among people as opposed to allowing inequality to naturally emerge and/or optimizing for total value across all people. I don't necessarily disagree: it is hard to argue from first principles that each individual should be given the same weight, as opposed to any other arbitrary system like giving each family the same weight, or taking intelligence into account. However, it is also wrong to pretend that there isn't significant precedent in society for assigning each individual equal moral weight — for example, by allowing everyone an equal vote in elections, which has clearly been a useful practice. And I consider it obvious that "Bias based on attractiveness is no worse than bias based on personality or any other trait" isn't something that would be widely agreed upon.