Always Open

Everyday debates that are always open for a vote.

• The screen turns to face you before you've even ordered, asking for a tip on a coffee you're about to pay full price for. Should you feel obligated to tip at a coffee counter?
• Everyone wants more legroom, and reclining eats into the space of the person directly behind. Is reclining your airplane seat inconsiderate?
• A hundred pages in, it still isn't clicking, but you've already invested the time. Should you finish a book you're not enjoying?
• The phone buzzes, and before anyone notices, half the table is looking down instead of at each other. Is it rude to check your phone during a meal with friends?
• A jar goes out on the counter next to the card reader before you've even gotten your drink. Should tipping be expected for a coffee you ordered at the counter?
• You unwrap a gift you'll never use and quietly plan to pass it on to someone else next birthday season. Is it OK to re-gift a present?
• Assisted dying is a genuinely live legislative debate in multiple countries right now, not a hypothetical. Should it be legal everywhere it's requested?
• Price hikes, fragmented libraries and ad-supported tiers have crept streaming back toward the exact experience it was meant to replace. Has streaming actually made TV worse than the cable era it disrupted?
• Diagnostic AI is already outperforming human doctors on some narrow tasks. Would you trust an AI over a human doctor if it had the better track record?
• One approach keeps everything shared, the other keeps a clear line of "mine" and "yours" even inside a committed relationship. Should couples have joint or separate bank accounts?
• The lights are down, the film has started, and somewhere behind you a conversation is still going. Is it acceptable to talk during a movie at the cinema?
• The sofa is technically furniture for humans, but the family pet clearly disagrees. Should pets be allowed on the furniture?
• A once-firm fashion rule that most people have heard of but few could actually explain the origin of. Is the "no white after Labor Day" rule still worth following?
• Courts and copyright offices worldwide are actively wrestling with AI-generated art, with no settled answer anywhere yet. Should it be eligible for the same copyright protection as human-made work?
• Few food debates are as durable as this one: sweet fruit on a savoury pizza. Should pineapple be on pizza?
• A hot dog is meat in a sliced bun, held together with condiments — which sure sounds like a sandwich by most definitions. But almost nobody actually calls it one. Is a hot dog a sandwich?
• The one purely personal-relationships question in this batch — less "should society decide X," more "what would you actually do." Is it ever OK to read your partner's phone without asking?
• The oldest trade-off in education policy: broader access to university, or a broader tax burden regardless of who benefits. Should university be free, even if everyone pays more tax for it?
• Momentum behind banning social media for under-16s has been building globally through 2026. Does it protect kids, or just push them onto less-regulated platforms and harder-to-monitor spaces?
• Four-day work week trials keep reporting strong results on productivity and wellbeing. Is it a genuine structural improvement, or a novelty effect that fades once the pilot ends?
• Inheritance tax is one of the oldest fights in tax policy: a fair check on unearned wealth, or double taxation on money that's already been taxed once. Should it exist at all?
• Tipping has crept into more and more everyday transactions, well beyond restaurants, and many people say they're now tipping on autopilot rather than out of genuine appreciation. Should tipping be scrapped entirely and folded into listed prices instead?
• Return-to-office mandates have triggered a wave of backlash through 2026, with most affected workers telling surveys they suspect the real goal is a disguised attrition strategy, not genuine culture-building. Should companies be allowed to fire remote workers who refuse to comply?
• AI could plausibly do half your job within a few years. If a company offered you half your current salary, for life, in exchange for AI taking over the bulk of your role — would you take the deal?