[jstelly]

I'm surprised that this discussion of tipping doesn't include the fact that it implements price discrimination. It's possible that the reason tipping is so often the end point of systems is that price discrimination is much more profitable than having a fixed price for everyone. So trying to design a pricing system that replaces a tipping-based service needs to deal with this problem. How is your service going to implement price discrimination without tipping? Otherwise how is it going to be as profitable as a system that has price discrimination?

I'm not saying I prefer these systems as a consumer; I would much rather pay a fixed price. I'm saying that it seems like they create the most profit and thus competitive edge for the businesses using them.