Honour system works for cafes, why not music?

macleans.ca has a report about honour system for payments working out wonders for a bakery. Here’s a snippet from the story.

John Bergen, a former potter, has two bakeries, both of them built inside old gas stations, both of them running on the honour system. Customers serve themselves then decide how much they owe with nothing but their own conscience to enforce payment. Last year, the bakeries — one in Preston, Ont., the other in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont. — grossed $1.2 million in combined sales.

“You want a coffee?” says Bergen, explaining how the set-up works. “You serve yourself. You want a bagel? You grab a bagel. You want the bagel toasted? You go over to the little bagel cutter. You put the bagel in the toaster. You put your own cream cheese on.” A blackboard lists the prices. A coffee is $1.50. A bagel is 75 cents. Customers take what they want, then do the math in their head. To simplify arithmetic, all prices are rounded to the nearest quarter and the tax is included. “Right in front is a fare box that we got from a streetcar. You throw your money in the cash box and walk out.”There are no cash registers. There’s no tip jar. They don’t have Interac and they don’t take credit cards. “It really attracts A types,” says Bergen. Customers can be in and out in one minute without ever interacting with staff, he says.

So if such an honour system can work for bakery, what stops us from making it work for musicians, writers and artists?