It's weird that I start reading an article agreeing with it, and want to disagree with it by the end. Instacart has _a lot_ of problems as a business model, but

It's weird that I start reading an article agreeing with it, and want to disagree with it by the end. Instacart has _a lot_ of problems as a business model, but this idea that it's super exploitative of this entire class of people is a bit missing the point. A lot of people working for instacart lost their jobs, probably right about the same time they lost the ability to drop their kids off at school all day. Instacart gave them an income stream that's flexible (they can pull a few high value shifts in the morning and then disappear for school hours, etc). It's not as if Instacart was secretly walking off with bags of cash - they're losing money. The article sort of takes this snide about venture capitalists making money on it but that's speculation based profit - in other words, it's not taking money from the business or it's employees. Instacart may never be profitable and that's an issue. They've avoided the very problematic behavior of DoorDash who was literally taking tips away from runners, and most people who post accounts of working for Instacart seem to like it though there are hiccups at times. In general my experiences with them have been decent - I always tip well and keep my orders simple and at off hours, only had the occasional issue.