Hi LessWrong,
Two years ago, when I travelled to Belize, I came up with an idea for a self-sufficient scalable program to address poverty. I saw how many people in Belize were unemployed or getting paid very low wages, but I also saw how skilled they were, a result of English being the national language and a mandatory education system. Many Belizeans have a secondary/high school education in Belize, and the vast majority have at least a primary school education and can speak English. I thought to myself, "it's too bad I can't teleport Belizeans to the United States, because in the U.S., they would automatically be able to earn many times more the minimum wage in Belize with their existing skills."
But I knew there was a way to do it: "virtual teleportation." My solution involves using computer and internet access in conjunction with training and support to connect the poor with high paying international work opportunities. My tests of virtual employment using Upwork and Amazon Mechanical Turk show that it is possible to earn at least twice the minimum wage in Belize, around $3 an hour, working with flexible hours. This solution is scalable because there is a consistent international demand for very low wage work (relatively speaking) from competent English speakers, and in other countries around the world like South Africa, many people matching that description can be found and lifted out of poverty. The solution could become self-sufficient because running a virtual employment enterprise or taking a cut of the earnings of members using virtual employment services (as bad as that sounds) can generate enough income to pay for the relatively low costs of monthly internet and the one-time costs of technology upgrades.
If you have any feedback, comments, suggestions, I would love to hear about it in the comments section. Feedback on my fundraising campaign at igg.me/at/bvep is also greatly appreciated.
If you are thinking about supporting the idea, my team and I need your help to make this possible. It may be difficult for us to reach our goal, but every contribution greatly increases the chances our fundraiser and our program will be successful, especially in the early stages. All donations are tax-deductible, and if you’d like, you can also opt-in for perks like flash drives and t-shirts. It only takes a moment to make a great difference: igg.me/at/bvep.
Thank you for reading!
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The nature of wage markets means the jobs would tend to go to the worst-off people who can take the jobs, whose wage demands would be lowest, as they'd have the most to gain from a given wage (that is, they'd take the job for less money, because the money is more valuable to them). This isn't a bad thing, although it's usually presented as one, particularly by those whose wages would be undercut.
(This doesn't consider market barriers or interference, granted; for one example, a mountain village might have the most to gain, but be unable to offer competitive labor pricing owing to the cost of providing infrastructure.)
Belizeans would probably be competing with wealthier people for work because their high level of English mastery allows them to compete for more advanced positions. The websites I mentioned have many workers from more developed countries. For example, half of MTurk's users are from the United States.