New APPS

The latest trendy idea.  It sounds great in some limited contexts, especially as a way to protect healthcare workers.  It also sounds suspiciously like a way for Trump and Co. not to do the actual work of testing and contact tracing, or to guarantee a general social safety net.  It's like some funhouse mirror version of a Deleuzian control society, coupled with the neoliberal destruction of everything except the imperative to generate surplus value.  Now you need a certificate to join the industrial reserve army…

What could go wrong?  Hank Greely shows that the answer is quite a lot, while Sam Hull (no relation) outlines the problems from a legal point of view, focusing on discrimination, and concludes by suggesting that they only begin to make sense when paired with a jobs guarantee program.  Both Greely and Hull highlight that any immunity certificate program will generate not just black markets in certificates, testing and so on, but perverse incentives to deliberately get Covid and risk death in order to get the certificate.  Of course… these folks will just be investing in their human capital!