The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

428 chapter 40for eight decades, eating rats during sieges, at length in the 1940s harrying theGerman occupiers, collectively, and are not ashamed to show it.An American CEO feels on the contrary that he should in honor to hisnoble rank buy an expensive lunch. He leaves a big tip for the same reason.Tipping in fact is an easy-to-observe outcome of a sacred decision, likegoing to church. Some nations that tip in restaurants are the United States(with the highest percentage of the bill internationally: 16.7 percent by survey),Canada, the UK, Mexico, Egypt. Some that don’t tip much or at all arethe Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Japan, Australia, andNew Zealand. 7 France and Italy occupy a nonsacred middle ground of servicecompris.Hmm. A pattern of church-or-temple-going associated with high tipping,yes? Perhaps not. John McCloskey suggests again that “eating out at arestaurant is regarded more as a form of entertainment in the U.S., callingfor an extravagant ritual of generosity. In other countries, eating at a restaurantis just one of the communal daily rounds, with more shared valuebetween waiter and diner and therefore less need for extra compensation.”He notes further that “in American restaurants that have the lowest entertainmentvalue and the most bare, utilitarian purpose—fast food—there isno tipping. And no community.” 8 One is reminded of the culinary advice oncoming to a small American town: “If you find a restaurant called ‘Mom’s,’keep looking. But if the only other restaurant in town is called ‘Eats’ ...goback to Mom’s.”All serious researchers on tipping agree that one cannot devise an explanationof tipping on the basis of simple, first-order prudence. 9 Either youhonor your Australian values of egalitarianism by sitting in the front seatwith the cab driver and not giving him a tip; or you show your Americandesire to be liked, yet show also your comfortableness with power differentials,by tipping generously in the United States. No simply prudent purposeis served, unless you think the anonymous cab driver in New York whomyou stiff may take out a gun and shoot you.Robert Frank argues persuasively that “the decision to tip in a distant cityis about the kinds of character traits one wishes to cultivate.” 10 He then goesto some lengths—some of it persuasive—to tell a story of P-motivated decisionsto become a certain character. Frank, like me, is an economist, swornto find P Only every chance he gets. That, and the secret handshake. He istrying to reduce S to a sort of elevated P. But as I’ve already noted about his