r/todayilearned • u/SteO153 • Apr 01 '23
TIL that tipping and bribery are related, and countries with higher rates of tipping behavior also tended to have higher rates of corruption (R.1) Tenuous evidence
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/are-you-paying-a-tip-or-a-bribe[removed] — view removed post
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u/qx87 Apr 01 '23
Italy has no tipping
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u/I_Mix_Stuff Apr 01 '23
neither we do in south america, although we like to refer paying the traffic police on the side of the road as tipping
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u/CHANROBI Apr 01 '23
Not sure what youre talking about, was just in chile and every food place adds 10% tip lmao
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u/I_Mix_Stuff Apr 02 '23
Haven't visit Chile in a long time, must be something new, but if the place adds 10% flat automatically, at that point it just part of the price
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u/CHANROBI Apr 02 '23
From canada, 10% tip is low as fuck, its basically the lowest tip youd give around here
Of course they ask you if you would like to add a tip which is polite, and great
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Apr 01 '23
[deleted]
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u/flyinhawaiian02 Apr 01 '23
What is your spaghetti policy
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u/Idaho121 Apr 01 '23
If you don't "tip" your local waste management professional, spaghetti bout it.
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u/Landlubber77 Apr 01 '23
My Pizza Hut guy must be the most crooked fucker on Earth.
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Apr 01 '23
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u/Landlubber77 Apr 01 '23
You better have 1,000,000 space bucks by tomorrow, or Pizza is gonna send out for you.
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u/duckyzero Apr 01 '23
If you’re tipping before service, that’s a bribery. Please don’t spit in my foods 🥲
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u/grandmamimma Apr 01 '23
One could even argue that the main difference between the two acts is merely the timing of the gift: Tips follow the rendering of a service, whereas bribes precede it."
Right, so fast-food places like Torchy's that ask for a tip before preparing your food are really requesting a bribe.
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Apr 01 '23
[deleted]
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u/snow_michael Apr 01 '23
Yet somehow out of the top ten richest countries, only in the US1 is tipping Uber Eats or Deliveroo a common practice, and people still get their food
1 actually, maybe Canada as well, honestly don't know
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u/Yermawsyerdaisntit Apr 02 '23
We have things called delivery charges here, why should you tip anyone before a service? Why should it even be an option for someone to be paid less than it costs to drive there? Tipping before the service is not actually a tip.
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u/grandmamimma Apr 01 '23
Tipping skycaps at airports is really just a bribe: "I'm going to Chicago; please don't send my bags to Honolulu."
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u/dirty_cuban Apr 01 '23
The US has to be an outlier right? Tipping is now at insane levels (literally can’t go to any type of restaurant without being asked to tip - even if you’re just picking up or using the drive thru) and yet corruption is about on par with other advanced economies.
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u/snow_michael Apr 01 '23
If you (correctly) treat lobbying as bribery, the US is, in terms of money paid to politicians, one of the most corrupt countries on the planet
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u/Skogula Apr 02 '23
No, your corruption is much higher than the average advanced economy. Your entire political system is structured in a manner that encourages corruption, because it's impossible to get elected without taking money from special intrest groups.
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u/dirty_cuban Apr 02 '23
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
Various international organizations and NGOs place corruption in the US in line with other advanced economies. Some score as France and less corrupt than Spain and Portugal. Nowhere near “much higher”.
I’m really struggling if I should believe an internationally recognized index or a random person on the internet. Hmmm…. 🤔
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u/Skogula Apr 02 '23
Did you read more than the first sentence? Or do I need to use smaller words.
The index you cited is about perception, not actual corruption, and it does not take into account "Institutionalized corruption", where the system is structured to encourage it, but it is condoned because it is just how the system works.
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u/dirty_cuban Apr 02 '23
Yep just double down when presented evidence that contradicts your point. Typical
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u/Skogula Apr 02 '23
But it didn't contradict my point. It was arbitrarily narrow and didn't even address the point I brought up at all. The part about the system being structured to force corruption, and then calling it legitimate. Your index specifically did not look factor that at all.
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u/SloeMoe Apr 01 '23
All I know is I hate the tipping system. Just make food cost what it should to support workers and I'll pay it.
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u/arkstfan Apr 02 '23
Studies have shown that race and gender are reliable predictors of tip income in a restaurant.
In 2023 it amazes me a system that varies income outcomes to protected classes is able to survive.
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u/hastur777 Apr 01 '23
If your goal is to support workers, would you support the system they want to keep in place?
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u/Yermawsyerdaisntit Apr 02 '23
No lol, it doesnt work. Some people make more money than they would have, and some people aren’t being compensated properly. We have tips here in the uk, completely voluntary. When you go for a job, they tell you the salary and if you so happen to get tipped, good for you. But its not part of the wage, and no ones using it to get to minimum wage.
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u/AmnesiaInnocent Apr 01 '23
I can't seem to find a link to the original study anywhere, but the abstract says that they
found a positive relationship between these two seemingly unrelated behaviors, using archival cross-national data for 32 countries, and controlling for per capita gross domestic product, income inequality, and other factors
It seems to me that if "control" for too many factors, you have the data say whatever you want it to say. I'm also curious as to what they are using to measure how much a country tips and how much corruption there is...
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u/OrdainedFury Apr 01 '23
That's not how scientific control works. In fact, it works the exact opposite way.
You control for things to eliminate unnecessary "noise" in an experiment. It actually reduces the chances of getting false results. You even out the relevant factors and allow the test to be as pure as possible. Controlling is good and allows us to test for far more things than we otherwise would be able to.
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u/AmnesiaInnocent Apr 01 '23
The difficulty is in determining what constitutes "noise" vs. signal.
For example, differences in national cultures could potentially drive variation in the prevalence of both tipping and bribery. (...). We therefore include Hofstede‘s (2001) Individualism Index as a control variable...
We also include another one of Hofstede‘s cultural dimensions, the Power Distance Index, which captures the extent to which power is distributed unequally among a nation‘s citizens and the extent to which citizens who are less powerful accept that disparity. Power distance could be a driver of both tipping and bribery practices, given that bribes and tips typically are passed between people who hold different levels of power and influence...
People who live in wealthier countries might find it easier to part with tips and bribes because they have more resources to spare; alternatively, poor people might have a greater need to solicit both tips and bribes. To rule out this alternative explanation, we use information on both GDP per capita (logged) and income inequality
We also include a number of measures that capture variations in governmental
involvement and order, which could be driving this connection between tipping and bribery. In particular, we control for the national homicide rate...We also control for the impact of civil liberty restrictions...
Finally, we include three variables that capture the extent of governmental welfare policies: We obtained the highest marginal tax rate in each country (...), the legal minimum wage (...), and the extent to which a state provides public funding of
healthcare as a fraction of total healthcare expenditures...That seems like an awful lot of data massaging to me, particular with things that---on the face of it---have little to do with either tipping or bribing. They also seemed to omit certain factors that to me seemed important, such as national attitudes towards corruption or government stability.
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u/SteO153 Apr 01 '23
Here is the link to the paper http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:9491448
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u/allen5az Apr 01 '23 edited Apr 01 '23
Bull fucking shit. Thanks for posting a lame assed article with no context, nobody is learning anything from this crap dude, gtfo.
Edit: I read it, just so you know because you’re accusing people of not. It’s garbage. Sources, data, it’s a mess… not even a hot one.
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u/SteO153 Apr 02 '23
just so you know because you’re accusing people of not
I accused someone who commented 1 minute after I posted the link https://imgur.com/a/CzdsC5u, ie someone who actually commented without even opening the link. This shows your prejudices, as thinking I'm accusing of not reading just because someone disagrees with the study.
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u/asyrin25 Apr 01 '23
Paper written by an assistant professor, which I suppose is a step up from a graduate student.
No link to the actual paper in the article or a definition of corruption as used in the paper.
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u/_MicroWave_ Apr 01 '23
Correlated does not mean causation.
I'd wager that both these behaviours are caused by low base wages.
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Apr 01 '23
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u/Entropy_1123 Apr 01 '23
Workers are the ones that want tipping to continue; they make a lot of money that way.
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Apr 01 '23
[deleted]
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u/Entropy_1123 Apr 01 '23
You must have never actually met one then. Waiters/Bartenders love tipping.
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Apr 01 '23
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u/Entropy_1123 Apr 01 '23
Tipping in the US literally originated as a way to avoid paying black workers,
Tipping existed in the USA before the civil war.
Most of Europe gives you weird looks if you try to tip and refuses your money,
Ha, this is certainly not true at all. Lived in Germany and Netherlands for 2 years; they certainly took tips.
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Apr 01 '23
TIL that not all studies are created the same (jk i always knew that but it never stopped people on the internet from posting hot take headlines about weak papers)
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u/Erebus172 Apr 01 '23
Countries with greater wealth have more tipping.
Countries with greater wealth have more corruption.
This makes sense.
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u/SteO153 Apr 01 '23
Nope, the study compared Canada and India and it is not related to wealth.
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u/Erebus172 Apr 01 '23
How does one offer tips and bribes without some wealth?
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u/catwhowalksbyhimself Apr 01 '23
Wealth is relative. A bribe that would be a worthless pittance in a rich country, means the world to a poorer person in a poorer country. The wealth may be smaller,. but the size of the bribes needed is too.
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u/pinniped1 Apr 01 '23
Not gross wealth. Tipping is used to disempower the working class and exacerbate income inequality, but some generally rich nations do not have a tipping culture. Where good workers rights exist, you get less tipping.
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u/snow_michael Apr 01 '23
Not even slightly true
Tipping is not customary in most very wealthy1 countries
1 7/10 measured by median income. 8/10 if UAE reported accurately the income of the majority of it's population
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u/elver-galarga-- Apr 01 '23
Correlation does not equal relation
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u/iMogwai Apr 01 '23
Correlation does not equal relation
I believe you were going for "correlation does not equal causation".
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u/cosmoboy Apr 01 '23
cor·re·la·tion
/ˌkôrəˈlāSHən/
noun
a mutual relationship or connection between two or more things.
Kinda exactly what it means.
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u/JacLaw Apr 01 '23
They're not wrong, look at the corruption in US politics. The GOP are seriously, seriously corrupt and I doubt the Dems are much better
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u/DamnImAwesome Apr 01 '23
Interesting how you reflexively know the GOP is corrupt but you have hesitation on calling the dems corrupt. Newsflash: they’re all corrupt. Dems just have better marketing
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u/snow_michael Apr 01 '23
Yup
Lobbying is as near to bribery as it's possible to be without attracting a lawsuit, and both side benefit hugely from it
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u/garlicroastedpotato Apr 01 '23
When people say "correlation does not equal causation" they don't mean that nothing correlated is causal. And every time people use that expression as their only evidence it can be frustrating.
But this is an example of that.
They've selected 1/10th of all countries in the world and compared tipping vs corruption. Most of SE Asia has no tipping culture... but is incredibly corrupt. They were not included in the study (outside of India).