There's a lot of ground between "just raise the minimum wage", and making it so that most patrons feel that the staff working at a restaurant are the same socio

There's a lot of ground between "just raise the minimum wage", and making it so that most patrons feel that the staff working at a restaurant are the same socioeconomic class as them and therefore aren't being "exploited". It would sure be nice if we could snap our fingers and "stop worker exploitation". But throwing an idyllic state of affairs out as a "solution" to reject a concrete idea that might actually move us towards a better place is counterproductive. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, if you ask restaurant workers about tipping many actually like it because good servers at good restaurants apparently do end up making a decent wage. So like a lot of things, the tiny sliver of shining meritocracy ends up carrying water for an overall oppressive dynamic. Which is why I think some transparency into what exactly a "tip" means in any given context would go a long way - the various ways business owners divert tips is itself a very direct form of worker exploitation.