If you think you’re gonna bait me into defending or denying America’s history of foreign intervention then you’ve got another thing coming. It happened. Plenty of it is downright evil.
But sadly, it’s not uniquely evil. Russia is waging an imperialist war of aggression and attempting a genocide of the Ukrainians, all while enriching their oligarchs as their civilians starve. China is repressing the Tibetans, committing genocide against the Uyghurs to create a Han ethnostate, threatening Taiwan, and is violating maritime borders in the South China Sea with their expansion of their naval presence.
Dissent, especially in China, is heavily policed. They took our dystopian monetary credit system and cranked it up to 11 with social credit, and work their people to the bone with companies in the country defying the ban on the 996 schedule enforcement. Russia considers LGBT people as a whole dissenters and arrests them simply for existing. Prominent political dissidents of Putin are simply murdered.
The fact that you and I are allowed to post about America’s past transgressions and speak highly critically of the government (and believe it or not, I do that quite a lot) is proof that we as a global superpower are freer than them, and principally why I categorically reject the notion that we are the world’s primary evil. It’s just not that simple. But I’ll take our flawed, bourgeois democracy over domination by than the outright fascist rule by our competitors.
But above all that I prefer peace and freedom. No more violence in Palestine, Yemen, Syria, Ukraine, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Civil rights and decent living conditions for all.
When I’m given free stuff I tip as if I paid for it. So if part of a meal is comped, for example, I’ll use the original subtotal, pre-discount, to figure out what to tip.
If I’m only getting drinks (coffee, alcohol etc.) I default to a $1 tip per drink, and if given a free drink I’ll add on to that while factoring the cost of what I’m given. But if any food is involved I start at 20% on the subtotal, then round up or down to the nearest 50¢ or $1 depending on how long I stay at the establishment and how much the subtotal is.
For takeout, I’ll tip less since I’m spending much less time in the establishment; I might round the total up to the nearest $5 or $10 depending on how much I spend.
And for delivery, I have basically never ordered for delivery in my entire adult life, and don’t plan to, I’d rather just go and pick up whatever I order. I was a pizza delivery driver before UberEats and the like were common and quickly got a feel for that etiquette (people were usually pretty generous) and decided it was a luxury I could live without.
Compared to you I guess I’m a bit cheap but I’d still tip the same even if front-of-house people were making more money, unless they explicitly tell me not to tip them (which has happened before). I don’t think people should feel bullied into tipping, because I think the business should be paying them the living wage instead, but just like at any other job good performance should always be rewarded.