Just wages, desert, and pay-what-you- want pricing

Abstract

Some restaurants allow guests to decide how much they would like to pay for their meals, depending on how much they enjoyed the experience. It is not counterintuitive to think that such a mechanism would set a deserved wage. After all, one might think that how much one deserves depends on how much value one creates for others and that individuals can adequately judge how much value they derive from some good or service. Hence, letting consumers decide what they think certain goods or experiences are worth would result, in the aggregate, in a deserved and just wage. In this paper, I will explore and defend this argument.