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That’s right, stand back mere Mortals! I have the solution to World Hunger and the desperate state of Africa!

Proposal: We institute a series of laws allowing people from Africa (or other desperately poor places) to Voluntarily sign themselves up to long-term (20+ Years) worker contracts. Instead of being paid cash monehs, they are provided with food and shelter. They amass a Retirement Fund which will increase by a fair amount for every year they work successfully up until the end of the contract (Whence they can continue to work if they are fit) or take their monehs back to their homelands. They can opt to send this money home by default, instead of getting a retirement fund.

Of course if they breach the contract then they forfeit all benefits, including any money they may have saved in their retirement fund. (To encourage worker reliability). There would be a Watchdog Scheme to make sure companies who employed workers using this programme treated them fairly. No shifts longer than 12 Hours, reasonable working/living conditions and decent meals would be expected as standard. We must remember though, for the programme to be popular and successful, the costs of keeping these workers would have to be low. This might result in a Shanty-Town or mass-living block status.

A promotion-out system would also work, where-by people who are exceptionally skilled might earn themselves an early contract release, and be offered a more prosperous full-rights contract similar to that of a typical worker. Again to encourage worker loyalty/reliability most of all. People who know they could go places … tend to work harder than those in dead-end jobs.

It could be possible to run a similar employment scheme in manual labour (until recently I had considered this ideal only for factory work) or even in home services. Although the latter of the two would be much harder to watch dog.

Constraints: Those pesky civil rights activists would call this “Slavery”. In reality this is Long-Term Committal Contracting. Laws at the moment would stop people from using such long contract lengths with opt-out clauses which are necessary to make the most out of any worker you would bring and train.

Its also difficult, legally, to pay someone with food and shelter, as opposed to money. And the rates we would be looking at would almost certainly be below minimum wage, significantly if possible.

Benefits: Cheaper labour means cheaper products. More importantly, these people would have an oppurtunity to work themselves out of poverty. Graduates of the programme could take their hard earned thousands of £’s back to their country, and put it to better use there or alternatively; They could just send the cash home to start with, so they can feed their families rather than us doing it for them.

So, what do you think? You can not deny that almost every great Nation on earth employed Indentured Servants. Whilst I would not ever support Slavery (all born equal etc), I would suggest that there are people on this Earth that deserve an oppurtunity to fix their own country. We either spend £billion’s doing it for them, or they could help us – to help them.

Regards,
James.

Remember: Vote for James, Emperor of Earth, 2035.