The only reason the waiter is bringing you food is because of the expectation that you will tip.
Wacky. The waiter brings food because that's the job description.
If you announced your intention not to tip, he would not serve you, he would tell you to fuck off.
And then the manager would fire him or her.
I tip, often generously, never at less than the standard 15%, but I have no illusions about the enforceability of the tipping folkway.
I suggest you run an experiment. Go try to eat at a restaurant and explicitly state your intention not to tip. I predict the waiter will tell you to fuck off, and if the manager gets called out, he'll tell you to fuck off too.
I see the implicit contract slightly differently. When you eat at a restaurant in North America you enter into (at least) two implicit contracts. The first is to pay for the food and drink you consume before you leave (not to do so would certainly be theft). The second is to pay a service charge that you feel is appropriate to the quality of service you received, with 15-20% generally considered appropriate for service that is of average quality and lower or higher tips appropriate for below or above average quality service.
You are in breach of the second implicit contract if you tip below 15% despite being satisfied with the service but I think calling that theft is a little strong. Bad faith or breach of contract would be closer to describing the offence. The system would be pointless if you never raised or lowered your tip to reflect the quality of the service as you perceive it however.
The system works to the extent that the cultural norm persists. If something caused the cultural norm to break down then new informal contracts would have to arise, perhaps more like the ones found in Europe where tipping is not the expected norm. Tipping is not particularly unusual in relying on widespread adherence to an implicit/informal contract however - paying for your meal after you eat it is just as reliant on cultural norms.
I basically agree with you, though I'm not sure the legal distinction between "theft" and "breach of contract" is meaningful in this context. As far as I know there's no law that says you have to tip at all. So from a technical legal perspective, failing to tip is neither theft nor breach of contract nor any other offense.
It's only theft not to tip if they actually include the tip in the bill as a "service charge". Otherwise, the tip is technically a gift. Withholding a customary gift might be mean (compare the likely outrage if you don't get your children gifts on their birthdays) but it's not stealing.
It may not be legal theft, but it's still moral theft. You sat down and ate with the mutual understanding that you would tip. The only reason the waiter is bringing you food is because of the expectation that you will tip. If you announced your intention not to tip, he would not serve you, he would tell you to fuck off. The tip is a payment for a service, it is not a gift. The fact that the agreement to pay is implicit, the fact that the precise amount of the payment is left partially unspecified are merely technicalities that do not change the basic fact that the tip is a payment, not a gift.
You don't tip in order to be altruistic, you tip because you informally agreed to tip by eating in a restaurant in the first place. If you don't tip (assuming the service was acceptable), you aren't being virtuous, you're being a thief.
Perhaps you should say the correct moral move is to tip exactly 15%.
I believe EY has already explained that he's trying to make more rationalists, so they can go and solve FAI.
Suppose the situation were that taw could make bets on the terms he wishes for - but only if he can convince 5 out of 9 rich people. How is this a market, and not some sort of bizarre committee or bureaucracy?
If I think I know a more efficient way to make a widget, I still need to convince somebody to put up the capital for my new widget factory.
But if results depend on my ability to convince rich people, that's not prediction market!
what!? Why not?
Is bullet-biting an inherently good thing? Is it even reliably correlated with good things?
I guess it depends on how you define bullet-biting. Let me be more specific: voted up for accepting an ugly truth instead of rationalizing or making excuses.
My thoughts, expressed in a sound bite:
If something isn't worth killing civilians over, it's not worth killing soldiers over either.
(Note that this is logically equivalent to its contrapositive: anything worth killing soldiers over is also worth killing civilians over.)
Voted up for bullet-biting.
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I think the main problem with mormon2's submission was not where it was posted, but that it was pointless and uninformed.