I'm not sure how much the tipping example applies here. People who own/run a restaurant get the "contents" of the bill (which is still money), is this fair? Fair with respect to the tips? Also, who gets to pay taxes on the tips? I'm quite sure that tips in Italy (we are in other parts) don't get taxed.

Here, I think that only the "owner" got a lot of "money" upfront that nobody gave him. But hey! He also got to create the money, so he was totally entitled to get so much of it!

I don't know how it works for anyone else (e.g. gods), but there's nothing hinting that they get a bigger piece of the cake. So, it seems we're all serving here, and those in the back don't get a penny.

If I were to compare the system here to the tipping system, I'd say that it's much more similar to other parts than not:

• you get XPs when you write something that adds value (and others cast their vote on what you write). Here, the more successful your service (a post), the more you earn (odds increase for reputations beyond some thresholds);
• you get XPs when you vote something, which adds value per-se because it helps good stuff to emerge (although if you constantly down-vote only you're encouraged to stop and try to see the bright side of life);
• you don't get XPs if you don't do anything (apart possibly getting a few pennies every now and then, just for showing up);
• you lose XPs when others dissent, which is like people at the restaurant getting refunded for not having received a good service.

Sometimes the taxing system steals you some. It's more similar to a reverse tax system though: the more tips your post receives, the less the tax system takes.

The current system with the complicated $NORM and thresholds and odds and all the rest can be cumbersome. It might have been designed since the beginning with a reverse mindset: instead of odds of getting 1 XP per vote, it might have set odds for getting additional XPs per vote. I didn't run simulations, but I imagine that from an helicopter's view it would probably seem quite similar to what we have today in shape, just scaled up.

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