In New Zealand, there's one nationwide sales tax — simple, transparent, on the menu. In the US, you have state, city, and county taxes all layered on top of each other. Darian Woods grew up expecting price transparency; America still hasn't delivered it.
Where this was said
At 6:00 · chapter starts 4:16
The fix to Bisaha's grievance comes in the form of handheld payment devices — the kind travelers to Europe or Australia have seen for years. Steven Bisaha introduces Miguel Aguilar, his server at a Jersey City restaurant, who describes life before and after. [1] — Miguel Aguilar "The minute we got these, we could take 4, 5, 6 tables outside, not worry about having to run in for every single order. And it nearly halve…" 05:09 Before: everything took forever, constant trips in and out. After: four, five, six outdoor tables managed without running inside, and service time nearly halved. Darian Woods notes he's seen these devices increasingly in Chicago and appreciates how easily they split checks. The devices come largely from a company called Toast, and Bisaha notes that restaurant inertia — plus a hardware cost of hundreds of dollars per device — slows adoption. [2] — Steven Bisaha "170,000+ US locations use Toast devices: As of March, more than 170,000 restaurant locations in the US were using Toast's handheld payment …" 06:40 But the momentum is real: Toast reported more than 170,000 US locations using their hardware as of March, and with competitors in the market, the pen-and-paper checkout may be heading for extinction.
Server Miguel Aguilar tried both systems. The old way: constant trips back and forth, everything taking forever. The new way: four to six tables at once, service time nearly cut in half. The change wasn't optional — it was transformational.
US restaurant menus don't show tax-inclusive prices — not out of malice, but because it's a collective action problem. Any single restaurant that adds tax to listed prices will look more expensive than competitors. Add overlapping state, city, and county taxes, and you start to understand why menus stay the way they are.
Sherry Kimes cited three reasons: tradition, competitive collective action risk, and the complexity of varying state, city, and county tax rates.
A Cornell professor explained that if one restaurant shows tax-inclusive prices but competitors don't, it will appear more expensive and lose customers — a classic collective action problem.
With handheld payment devices, server Miguel Aguilar said he could manage 4 to 6 tables outside without running back inside for every order.
Server Miguel Aguilar said the handheld payment devices nearly halved the time needed to serve each table compared to the old pen-and-paper system.
More freedom doesn't produce more happiness — it produces more anxiety. Kierkegaard identified this 180 years ago: the more options you have, the more you feel the 'dizziness of freedom,' a paralytic unease at having to choose any single one. The freest generation in history is, by his prediction, exactly the most anxious.
Every person lives in constant tension between infinite possible selves and the finite, limited self they actually are. Tipping too far toward infinite possibility produces a loss of identity; too much confinement in the finite produces stagnation. Kierkegaard argued that this tension is never solved — only managed.
Standing outside a cold pool imagining reasons not to jump is the exact experience of pre-commitment anxiety. Once you jump, the shock passes and you wonder why you ever hesitated. The same mechanism governs every significant commitment in life — the dread is always on the outside, the relief on the inside.
Traditional societies had rites of passage that closed off childhood and opened adulthood. Modern society kept the in-between liminal phase but eliminated the ritual that resolved it. The result is 'emerging adulthood' — a decade or more stuck in the transition — engineered by rising education requirements, women entering the workforce, and delayed marriage.
When Mark Manson proposed to his wife, software he didn't know was running — the low-level assessment of sexual market value and other options — suddenly shut down. Commitment doesn't take freedom away. It trades optionality (freedom to do many things) for focus (freedom from distraction). John Dewey called these positive and negative freedom, and the latter is more powerful.
Mark Manson spent years as a location-independent digital nomad — always a new country, a new woman, a new venture. Then the diminishing returns kicked in: countries started feeling the same, dates felt identical, businesses all frustrated him. The cure wasn't more novelty. It was narrowing: one place, one person, one career.
Every meaningful commitment has a dip — an initial peak of excitement, a brutal trough of difficulty, and a second higher peak for those who push through. Institutions once kept people in the dip long enough to reach the other side. With infinite optionality and no institutions, everyone bails at the bottom and restarts the cycle of shallow first peaks.
Stage one — the aesthetic — is the default: chasing sensation, novelty, and keeping every door open. Stage two — the ethical — is learning to choose with eyes wide open, accepting the trade-offs. Stage three — the religious — is when a commitment becomes so total that it no longer feels like a choice. It just feels like who you are.
The ethical stage is rational commitment — you can explain your choices. The religious stage is when your commitment exceeds rational justification. You can't explain why. It just feels like it chose you. Kierkegaard called this the 'virtue of the absurd' — and it's represented not just in faith but in the entrepreneurs, artists, and athletes who can't imagine doing anything else.
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