I know this has been mentioned ad-infinitum but that's why in some countries the pay is not rock bottom (it's not great, but not rock bottom) and the incentive for performance is to keep your job. And yes, consistently good performers do get paid more (sometimes significantly more) than the average. All I want is a normal dining experience, if they server can't provide that then they should be fired.

Why would a restaurant owner allow a diner to receive poor service? Would the diner not visit the establishment again? (here's a hint, I avoid several places for bad service and I know I'm not the only one).

Can you imagine how the owner must feel if he lost a big-spending, lousing-tipping customer because the customer never tips servers (or always undertips), and finally the servers gave them terrible service for that and so he will never return. The restaurant owner has vested interested in keeping customers happy too. So part of the job description of any employee should be to keep the customer happy.

The counter-argument to this is that it's a free country, and if a owner did see value in such an approach they would do so, and if it was truly a successful way of doing things you would see restaurants everywhere that don't take tips.