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It certainly reduces risk for the clients, but also increases risk for the gig worker. It might reduce societal risk overall, though I'd argue it's hard to say
by blix 6y ago
It certainly reduces risk for the clients, but also increases risk for the gig worker. It might reduce societal risk overall, though I'd argue it's hard to say without a deeper understanding of overall behavior, especially since poor people are already at higher risk due to a number of other factors.
Concentrating harm in an already disadvantaged group in the name of the 'greater good' is ethically thorny though. It can be used to justify a lot of not-so-great things.
- nineplay 6y agoThere are more people involved here than the gig workers and the advantaged, The grocery store employees are at a decreased risk if one person does the shopping of. The managers may have a pretty comfortable salary but the bag 'boys' or the workers stacking pallets behind the scenes could also be disadvantaged.
- blix 6y agoIf a gig worker reguarly goes to multiple grocery stores (which is pretty common, moreso than for individual shoppers), there might not be much benefit for grocery store workers. The ability to transfer disease between grocery stores might increase risk in a major way. It's also not clear that interacting with one high-risk gig worker is better than interacting with twenty low-risk remote workers. I'd be wary of coming to strong conclusions here without data; you can easily come up with plausible arguments either way.