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!
I think I understand the point: hypothetically, this program would take work away from people more in need, possibly even making the world worse off because of that. But if I magically made half of the virtual workforce disappear, then the half of the people that were removed would be really poor and the other half would be twice as rich. But is that creating more good? No, because the richer half would not need the money as much as the poorer half. If I added more people who were earning less money before being added then I am creating a net good, and that's what I am trying to do. I don't think the impact of helping several dozen people (just at first!) get out of poverty is insignificant, and since the program could be expanded if our tests indicate it works effectively, I think it could be considered high impact it terms of the number of people it could help and how much it could change their lives.
You're assuming that there's more supply right now than there is demand. That's possible, but unlikely given that I usually get 8+ highly qualified applicants for every remote work job I post (and a bunch more unqualified).
If that was the case, adding more people would get more people out of poverty. However, in this case, where the supply of workers outstrips the demand, adding more workers will just be shifting who gets any particular job - poverty stricken person A, that you're not working with - or poverty stricken person B, that you are working with... (read more)