Right to Work: A Proposal

The Emergency Labor Force

The Bill of Rights of the Soviet Union included the Right to Work among the rights of its citizens. The problem with this is that it places the government in the position of guaranteeing employment, and in times of low employment, this means the government must pay lots and lots of people to work. These people are not a part of a competitive free market economy, they are doing nothing and collecting a paycheck from the government. There is relatively little difference between this right to work and welfare.

On the other hand, a competitive free market economy needs everybody in the population to be able to participate actively in the economy. The larger the percentage of persons unable to participate, the lower the standard of living, and the slower the economy. It would appear on the surface that the government could ensure maximum participation in the economy by its citizens by guaranteeing a livable minimum wage, and a right to work. This would keep all persons employed, and participating in the consumer economy.

The problem with this, is that people who get paid to do nothing, or to do make-work, are not much better for an economy than people who sit around and draw welfare. Face it, sitting around and drinking coffee in a government office, or sitting around at home and watching TV to collect a government check are not really different things.

So what should we do, replace welfare with a work for money system, just cancel welfare altogether. Shoot the poor because they are unsightly. No, let us speculate on how a right to work system could effectively replace the welfare system, while integrating people into the civilian economy, providing guaranteed employment, provide some skill and training opportunities, help unwed mothers, cost less than the current system, solve the homeless problem, and all without a highly paid government bureaucracy. Impossible, of course it is. Nothing ever works in real life as well as it does on paper.

However, there are some ideas that might help. First, do we really want to create a huge culture of people whose idea of employment is to collect a government check for make work? No. So instead of putting the government into the make-work to keep people employed business, we might put the government into the labor brokerage business. In every town in America there are small businesses that broker labor. People who need work show up, and employers show up, and the small businesses connect the two for temporary employment. The workers receive minimum wage from the small business, and the business itself is paid eight or ten dollars an hour for the workers they supply.

Instead of making work for everyone on welfare, have them show up at a government office. Let the government broker them out at minimum wage plus 25% and pay them minimum wage minus 25 cents. Persons in this system will only be doing make work for the government when real work in the civilian economy is not available. The money that the government is paid for their work when real work is available will help to defray the cost of the system overall. This will cost a whole lot less than anything the government is likely to come up with on its own.

If the government does a pure make-work program, the people involved are not exposed to the civilian economy. They will tend to look for ways to advance in the governments make-work bureaucracy. You will just have another big government bureaucracy. In a labor brokerage system, the persons work a variety of jobs in the civilian economy. They meet potential employers in the civilian economy. They get on the job training and experience at work in the civilian economy. They can ask other workers they meet on the job how those workers got their job. A labor brokerage program will integrate unemployed persons into the civilian economy. A pure make-work program cannot do that nearly as well.

Pay the workers 25 cents an hour LESS than minimum wage, and charge minimum wage +25% for their services. Why? If an employer is using a part time laborer 30 hours a week, and it costs him minimum wage + 25% to pay for that labor, he might as well hire the worker full time at minimum wage. He will get ten more hours of labor for his money. The worker will get a 25 cent an hour pay raise. Both employer and worker are motivated to move workers out of the governments employment program as fast as possible. This program provides a greased ramp for sliding people from the government work program into the civilian work force. Of course, the extra 25% helps to defray the cost to the government of the program.

What about all those neat things that a government make-work program can do for local cities and states. Cleaning up, clearing things, etc. Simple, the local city or state can hire the workers on the same terms as any other employer. Minimum wage +25%. If the president declares an area a disaster area, the federal government might waive these costs.

OK, lets face it. These people are not going to be needed by local employers all the time. In fact, most of the time, they are going to be doing make-work. How do we handle that?

Productive or Nonproductive Labor

Here is another problem. Many people want such a force to be engaged in ‘productive labor’. Unfortunately, every time you employ someone in ‘productive’ labor by the government you take a job away from someone else already doing that labor in the private sector. Then you have another unemployed person who the government must employ. You now have two people on the government payroll doing the work of one person. Government subsidized ‘productive’ labor is always more expensive and less efficient than productive labor in the free market. Free market production cannot compete against a government subsidized industry supported by taxation and the system always ultimately fails.

Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Police, Firemen, Teachers, and virtually all employees of the Government are engaged in what is called nonproductive labor. What they provide are intangibles. Primarily what they provide and indeed the only thing that the Social Contract can legitimately provide is an increased guarantee of the second set of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This is an increased guarantee of physical safety and security so that Citizens can go peacefully about the business of making money and supplying their other needs themselves. This nonproductive work which provides intangible but very real benefits to the Citizens is the only purpose for which the State or Social Contract exists. It is in this arena alone where the Government can legitimately employ people.

It is also necessary that the taxpayers should feel that they are getting something in return for their money. All of those unemployed people should be prepared in some way to give back some kind of return for what they are receiving. It is also necessary for the self-respect of those receiving the aid that there should be a real promise that they can if need be repay what they are given. The introduction to the section on Black Issues in this book quotes Hobbes on the relationship between receiving without repaying and perpetual servitude. The section in this book on Hospitality and Property shows that there is an unwritten economic contract in the natural instinct towards charity and helpfulness to ones fellow men. It is necessary to keep this contract alive. It is necessary to work with human nature. People in this system must be prepared to repay what they receive and given the belief that they will have a chance to return the aid they receive from their fellow Citizens in times when those Citizens need aid.

In the normal course of events those Citizens paying the taxes to maintain this system will not need the financial aid of the people thus employed. There will always be times of emergency. Fire, flood, earthquake, terrorist attack and other events will occur when the Citizens desperately need the help of their fellow Citizens. This is both a time when the poor can help the wealthy, and the proper sphere of activity for the State or Social Contract to be employing people.

It follows that during the periods in which labor brokerage does not provide employment for the unemployed that they should be training to help their fellow Citizens in times of National or even private emergency.

This will be very important to the people employed as well as to the taxpayers. Nothing contributes to self-esteem and personal satisfaction as much as a sense of mission. A make work program without a mission will be degrading and intolerable to those employed by it. They will then invent excuses on why their support is ’owed’ to them by the others in order to regain their own self respect. A work opportunity with a mission will give those employed by it a sense of personal worth. It is necessary, in order to meet the psychological needs of both those paying for the program and those employed by the program to have a mission for the program. Thus it becomes the Emergency Labor Force, all the temporarily unemployed who wish to apply receive training in basic emergency response tasks to help their fellow citizens in times of National or even personal emergency.

Such a force would be associated with the Homeland Security Agency and closely integrated with the National Guard and the Department of Defense.

Organizing the System

Set up the system on a military structure. There should be mandatory physical fitness. No dress code or hair standards these are free Citizens. Uniforms cost money and carry either a negative or positive connotation. Citizens will see the uniforms of ELF as a mark of a loser in times of peace and plenty. In times of emergency, or after the ELF has deployed and aided its fellow Citizens they will be a mark of pride. Uniforms should never be worn when ELF members are brokered out in the temporary labor market. The purpose of that is to integrate them into the work force. Anything which sets them apart and marks them as different from other workers is self-defeating. Uniforms provided as High School sports uniforms are, by contributions from the private sector might be worn when marching in public parades or other similar public events. Mandatory drill and ceremony are necessary. Drill and Ceremony build esprit de corps. They are also a necessary training to move large bodies of people in a coordinated manner. The members of ELF can march in their local municipal parades. Units can be named after the area they originate in. Job training opportunities can be provided by offering access to the military store of correspondence courses to be completed on the job. Members of the Cadre can teach courses to those not brokered out to the private sector based on their own job experiences.

Members of the cadre, the supervisors and administrators of the system will wear uniforms or emblems of rank. Persons employed will salute, stand at attention, and parade rest, say yes sir, and yes sergeant.

Evolutionary Design Considerations

There are a number of standing jokes about how Americans train for war. A quote from a Russian general about how it is useless to read American military doctrine because the Americans don’t read it. A quote from a German General about how the Americans are good at war because war is chaos and all American military training is chaos. These quotes are proudly displayed in Battalion and Brigade Headquarters throughout the U.S. Army.

Army units very frequently deploy in mixed units. A tank battalion will combine with an infantry battalion and each company will have a mix of vehicles. At the battalion and brigade levels each unit provides the other unit with copies of their own SOPs which are unique for each unit. The staff must then know enough about the other units SOPs to coordinate operations and know what the other unit is talking about.

In major training exercises like those at NTC in Nevada/California not only do the units compete against the OPFOR, but they compete against each other, and their SOPs are tested in the field. Prior to one such exercise I spent many a 16 hour day sitting at a computer with the Battalion Commander typing in and changing the SOPs according to his very exact and clear ideas about what they should say. That NTC rotation was very impressive. At the beginning the Lt. Col. involved was just one of several when the Brigade met. Towards the end of the rotation, whenever he spoke, everyone listened. His Battalion had won almost every battle it participated in against the OPFOR. Quite an accomplishment.

In the years following in different Divisions, Brigades, and Battalions, copies of his SOPs were being passed around among the Officer Corps. As I periodically participated in preparing Unit SOPs I would recognize things from that first set that I had done. This is a kind of survival of the fittest in designing operational plans.

Similarly in the ELF, individual units should have a good degree of operational freedom in deciding exactly how to go about implementing their mission. Different levels of command should have email lists to exchange ideas and methods for addressing the problems which develop. Methods and techniques which work will survive, those which do not work will eventually be eliminated.

It is also likely that the same methods and techniques that work in New York will not work in Georgia or Alabama. Different units require different SOPs.

Providing a Cadre or body of Officers and NCOs

Of course, this system is going to need a cadre. It is going to need administrators and supervisors. Preferably some of whom have military experience. Well, no one wants to create another huge highly paid government bureaucracy, filled with huge, highly paid government bureaucrats. So, try this idea on for size. Fill the cadre with personnel already retired from jobs in the government or civil sector. Pay them exactly the same as everyone else in the employment corp. Minimum wage minus 25 cents an hour. No retirement plan, no health plan, no paid vacations, none of that. Ask people who are retired, and collecting a pay check already to volunteer to help make the system work. Pay them, an honorarium for their services, minimum wage -25 cents an hour. They get out of the house, get to do something important for their country. The country gets a really good, highly trained and experienced cadre really cheap.

The proportion of elderly in our nation is increasing. More old people remain capable and able longer. A large enough number of these people will be prepared to do this to provide a cadre. Many will do it to get out of the house. Many to feel a purpose in their lives again. Many for a bit of extra spending money every month. Many for a combination of these and other reasons. The numbers required will be small compared to the potential labor pool. Assume that the cadre makes up 20% of the force. Assume a rate of 10% unemployment. One fifth or 20% of 10 is 2. Two per cent of the population would be needed as cadre. The following url shows a graph of the growth of the elderly population in the US http://iucar.iu.edu/geninfo/demo/growth.html. It is growing rapidly and will be an increasingly large portion of the population in the foreseeable future. Almost 13% of all Americans are 65 or older and the percentage of the population as a whole in this age group is growing. A 13% labor pool supplying a 2% requirement will provide some chance to recruit the cadre selectively. In these estimates the rate of unemployment and size of the cadre have been guestimated on the large side. In the real world the labor pool available will probably be a larger, and the cadre a smaller proportion of the population.

This method again harmonizes with human nature and what we call Natural Law. It is natural to give respect to the elderly and those more experienced. People who have retired from employment will have good practical advice and stories of their life experience to share with the unemployed. Those of the unemployed coming from a culture of poverty will gain exposure to the culture of gainful employment.

The Cadre being retired from civilian as well as military organizations will still retain acquaintances and contacts in the factories and businesses in which they used to work. Their recommendation for people they meet and teach in the ELF or Emergency Labor Force will carry weight in the places they used to work and retired from. This kind of Cadre provides an opportunity for the unemployed to network with and make contacts in the world of gainful employment. Some studies have shown that personal recommendations, who you know, makes up 80% or more of the factors involved in successfully gaining employment.

In communicating skills to the unemployed, especially in addressing the culture of poverty, the communication of cultural values is necessary. In the Navy, instructors are taught to annotate in their lesson plans times to stop covering the technical material presented to tell sea stories. Stories from their own lives and experiences at sea. This reawakens the interest of the students and communicates the culture of the Navy. The cadre will need to tell stories of the workplace, their best bosses, their worst bosses, etc. They will also teach basic realities. Retired police can teach basic law and citizenship. Retired nurses basic first aid. Classes on handling money, handling credit cards, and other things can be included in the training.

Administration Issues

Local units can set up their own work and training schedules. Administrators should try to create units that can provide effective training by grouping MOS's together. An MOS is a military occupational specialty. Thus, you could put persons who worked as Mechanics in the army or civilian sector in a local employment company, they could provide practical training in auto repair, tool use and care, etc. During the time that the 'privates' are not occupied in civil sector jobs, or physical training, or drill and ceremony. Local businesses could be given tax breaks for contributing needed training space or materials.

The Cadre will need a special officer who goes around from business to business in the local area recruiting aid of one sort or another for the ELF Contributions of paint and material for maintaining the facilities, contributions of specialized labor, and other things. Such contributions should be rewarded by tax law, and public recognition for service to the local community. People retired from a life in sales of various types should be excellent for this sort of thing.

The Army uses a color cycle system in addressing training time problems. During red cycle a unit is tasked for work details. They paint and clean and pick up trash around the base. During yellow cycle the unit divides its time between work details and military training. During green cycle the unit trains intensively on its specified mission and is not subject to being called on for work details.

A similar system would work for the ELF During red cycle a given company in a battalion would be tasked to provide all the laborers for the labor brokerage. A company in yellow cycle would do classroom training in emergency procedures and some work details. A company in green cycle would practice maneuvers and major operations to deal with things like floods, fires, earthquakes or terrorist attacks.

Drill and Ceremony seem to the Civilian to be mindless military stuff. It is impossible or move large bodies of people about in an organized manner without them. They also build pride and esprit de corp. Marching the ELF companies to staging areas to load on trucks for transport to emergency areas requires such training. They also provide a chance for public display and civic pride. Units of the ELF could train to march in parades on days like the 4^th of July or Memorial Day. For such marches businesses like WalMart or other local businesses could provide uniforms for the marchers as they provide uniforms for High School sports teams.

Basic training in medical emergencies is also fundamental. Most people can perform CPR, or the Heimlich maneuver, if they have been taught to do so. All members of the ELF should receive some basic training in such matters. Then, as one or another saves the lives of their fellow citizens in some small personal emergency the taxpayer can see on a fairly regular basis that they are getting something for what they pay, and the members of the ELF can point with pride to such occurrences contributing to their own self-respect.

Confidence training is fundamental. Obstacle courses in the Military have largely been replaced with Confidence Courses. People who have never done something generally have doubts about their ability to do it. The loss or degradation of the basic ability to face workplace problems is a noted side effect of welfare and similar programs. The unemployed and the poor also frequently cover this up by talking about how easy it would be and how it is nothing to them.

Jive talking is no substitute for real confidence. Building confidence is a military speciality. If something feels impossible, it weighs a person down. Any new task can feel impossible. If you get a person to overcome this fear or sense of difficulty doing things like overcoming the fear of heights, or other exercises included in confidence courses, you can develop in them a habit of overcoming fear. This habit of doing what feels impossible will reduce the impact that trying to do the unfamiliar has on them. Part of the training received should focus on building the confidence of the members of the ELF Not by empty words telling them they are good people and can do it, but by real actions, requiring them to face and overcome personal fears that all people have.

Good Order and Discipline

This is a volunteer organization. If you want to work, the job and paycheck are there. If you do not want to work. Then you don’t have to. You just lose the paycheck. The USSR tied the right to work to a duty to work. Work was not voluntary, it was compulsory. A free country is based on the assumption that if you give people freedom they will do what they choose and people who have chosen to do something will do it with greater commitment and dedication and therefore better than people who have not.

To compel the unemployed to be members of the ELF would violate the principles on which our Republic is founded. There will be predictable numbers of people showing up for work without any compulsion. Those numbers will be accurate enough to make necessary operational plans. An unemployed person can show up for work once a week, twice a week, one week a month or whatever. He does not get paid if he does not show up. People who have been receiving welfare will find this hard to accept or understand in the beginning. Many will assume that they show up once, like in welfare to register and then will still get paid if they don’t show up. That is not how it works. No work, no pay.

The only exception to this is when a real emergency occurs. If you have been being paid to train to help your fellow Citizens and then fail to show when you are called to perform that duty during an emergency you are in breach of contract. Persons working with the ELF are required to show when the ELF must muster for action. In the real world this will not be a problem. ELF members will show from a sense of pride, and regular citizens will show up because they are confused by the emergency and want some direction and guidance on what to do. The turnout for ELF during real emergencies will generally be much higher than on a regular daily basis, if properly implemented. Since the regular ELF members will have more training and know more about what is to be done, they will frequently end up acting as temporary NCOs guiding the actions of the less trained Citizens who muster during an emergency. The general effect of this should be beneficial. It will be the natural tendency to look down on the ELF personnel as losers in the economic rat race. Occasionally looking up to them, seeing them as leaders in times of emergency, will tend to counteract this.

The Cadre falls under a different standard. It is an unbreakable law of political philosophy that with greater authority goes greater responsibility. Cadre members must sign up for a tour of duty. Two years or so is probably a proper length of time. Regular attendance and performance of duties is a must. Failure to perform adequately should be met with administrative action and probably discharge as the most general solution.

The section on this book on Cruel and Unusual Punishment demonstrates that a Citizen can never be punished in his body. This is a fundamental principle. This system should build Citizens, not Subjects. This leaves the pocketbook and the unemployed and poor by definition do not have deep pocketbooks. Docking pay if work assignments are not carried out is one means of discipline. A second is to temporarily suspend the right to work. A person who is habitually a troublemaker may have the right to work at ELF facilities temporarily suspended for a week or month.

There is a third type of punishment informally practiced in the Military. This includes things like having someone clean a latrine with a toothbrush or cut a lawn with a pair of scissors. While Civilians probably dismiss these things as a kind of petty sadism, it is really harder on the NCOs enforcing them than giving the men a lawnmower would be. It is a part of the traditional body of NCO actions and the product of the evolution of military culture over time.

Consider it in the context of building confidence. It feels impossible to clean a latrine with a toothbrush or to cut a lawn with a pair of scissors. It is the wrong tool for the job, and it is a stupid waste of time. It combines all of the psychological elements which lead people to fail at a task before they start. If a person does it successfully, he does something which feels impossible, he learns the patience to do things he thinks are stupid to get his pay, and he develops the habit of facing the impossible and the stupid in employment and overcoming them. They combine all of the psychological negatives involved in frustrating and negative tasks, overcoming those feelings develops the habit and ability to overcome those feelings. It builds character. It is advisable that when it is necessary to fine the pay of a member of the ELF they should be given a choice between the fine and some such task. This provides a third, character and confidence building alternative for discipline within the ELF.

Sexual Harassment and similar problems.

Let's face it, you have an eighteen year old girl, and a fifty year old man. The man has some control over the girls paycheck, and over whether she is digging ditches or working in an office when civil employment opportunities come along. The temptation to use that in an abusive way exists. In a government program employing probably millions, some people are going to give in to temptation. In order to avoid this, I would recommend organizing the ELF along the lines of the WW II army. I.E. a MELF and a WELF Women would be in charge of women, and men in charge of men. No opportunity for sexual harassment.

There are other advantages. Men and women have different internal plumbing. Men do not know much about women's complaints and are more likely to make a wrong decision when a woman complains about a pain here or there than another woman is. It's less expensive to provide a single sex facility than a multi-sex facility. Washrooms, have to be provided in the same proportion for both sexes, etc. It is just easier to make it work with a MELF and a WELF than with another system.

Child Care

Many women in this program would be young, single, mothers. This calls for a solution to child care problems while they are working. The WELF centers could include a child care area, and a duty roster, where some women take turns caring for all the children while other women handle labor requests from the local economy or participate in various types of training. Regulations could state that at all times there will be no more than 10 children per woman caring for them or something similar. WELF centers could provide training in child care, prenatal care, etc., as part of their work programs.

The Cadre for this part of the program should be women who have successfully gotten children through school and into college. The respect for grandmothers is instinctive and in some ways stronger than the respect for Alpha Males. An Alpha Male lasts for a few years before another Alpha comes along. A grandmother is forever or so it feels. Scientists doing experiments on the effects of various scents on human beings have discovered that there is a specific smell that women past menopause have. They have found that infants react to this scent by calming down. The reaction of respect and trust to grandmothers is hardwired into humanity by mechanisms which evolved before the primate or mammal brain. Mechanisms hardwired directly into the emotions below the level of conscious thought.

Grandmothers should be sought for the cadre in this part of the program. While which specific WELF members are providing care to the children will change, the Grandmother will be there everyday to supervise. Such women can provide daily guidance in the kind of nurturing and childrearing which helped get their children successfully through school to a college level.

Some may suggest that this kind of child care is inferior or second rate. They may suggest that child care requires trained professionals not volunteers and the unemployed poor. The idea that people with certification of some sort in some politically correct ideology are better prepared to take care of children than grandmothers with decades of experience is not obviously true. Grandmothers are the natural vectors for the culture and behaviors necessary to successfully raise children. It is necessary to work with nature, and use human nature as appropriate when designing social programs. The process of choosing successful Grandmothers to provide the example and supervision for this program will probably work better than some politically vetted process of academic certification.

Dr. Flynn in his book “Race, IQ, and Jensen” discusses a number of studies about the effects of environment on IQ. In Chapter 3 he discusses studies of children in England raised in residential nurseries undertaken by Barbara Tizard in the 70s. Black children in these studies did quite well. They apparently profited from an environment which was richer than that in many private homes. The staff were not highly educated professionals but students working on nursing degrees.

Dr. Flynn in chapter five of his book discusses the Tizard studies again in context of how specific differences in approach to child care produced changes in the IQ scores of the children. Pages 176 to 180 discuss the differences in child care methodology and how it effected IQ scores on various tests. Some factors involved were the ability of the children to interact in a meaningful way in making decisions on things like watching TV, break time, when they were read to, etc. Another was the presence of different age groups where older children could provide guidance and leadership to younger children. Groups scoring higher in these methodologies showed a measurable increase in average IQ scores of the children. Studies like this can provide useful guidelines in providing child care through the WELF system.

Such a program can also prevent the horrors of child abuse which haunt current government efforts to provide for children. If you are receiving government support for a child, then you must bring that child in to the WELF center during normal working hours. No more children lost because their social workers didn’t check on them, or locked in basements and closets, while their ‘caregivers’ spend the government checks. If you are poor enough to need government support for a child then you also need the daycare which WELF will provide and must bring the child receiving government support into the WELF center for daycare.

Sexual Discrimination

What about sexual discrimination? Well, there probably would be some. Civilian employers looking for ditch diggers would be more likely to go to the MELF and people looking for part time office help would probably go to the WELF. Men could feel seriously discriminated against. However, the ELF with its MELF and WELF branches would not be intended as a career choice. Hopefully the average time spent there by ELF 'privates' would be less than a year between jobs. Sexual discrimination is not really a factor under those circumstances.

Who is eligible for employment by the ELF? Everybody. Get rid of that huge bureaucracy that does nothing but determine eligibility for the government handouts called welfare. All those highly paid civil servants probably cost the government more than they save anyway.

There is no automatic check in the mail. With ELF pay is tied to work, hour for hour. You show up, punch in the time clock, and get paid at the end of the week for the hours you actually put in. No freeloaders. If you can show up between the hours of say 8 to 4 that the ELF provides work, you clearly don't have a job during those hours, so you are eligible. What about people who work nights? If someone is willing to work a second job for minimum wage minus 25 cents an hour, they probably need the money, and are willing enough to work hard that they will be able to find a second job fairly rapidly anyway. Why worry about it. ELF doesn't pay very much, you don't know what you will be doing from day to day. One day it might be cleaning out a septic tank, the next it might be digging ditches, and the next it might be shoveling coal. When you are not doing that in the civil sector, some sergeant is making your life miserable by making you do pushups, or drill and ceremony, or clean and paint the office, etc. If you really need the money, you will be glad to have it, if you don't, you can find something better to do with your time.

Establishing the Base

Startup costs. Local state and municipal authorities can help provide land and buildings. Offer tax breaks for contributions of money and equipment and cleaning supplies to local businesses. Use the ELF 'privates' to do the work of making the offices and facilities up to standard. ELF ‘privates’ can learn the importance of maintenance by maintaining their own workspaces. When someone vandalizes the place other ELF members are responsible for fixing and maintaining it. This will build a culture which condemns vandalism.

Indirect Benefits of the ELF program

There are a number of ways in which a program like will this help the country. Economic instability is to a large degree the product of fear and uncertainty. A guarantee that the government will employ the unemployed will act to counter this. The guarantee of employment means a guarantee of the continued existence of a market for goods. This will tend to prevent businesses from panicking and reacting to economic slowdowns with massive layoffs. Simply creating the ELF will tend to make it less necessary. It will also reduce the severity of economic cycles.

The ELF will provide employment for released prisoners. This will provide them with a means of entering legitimate employment. Instead of being judged only by their records, they will have the opportunity to work with and meet people in regular employment. The guarantee of employment will remove the excuse of desperation forcing them back into a life of crime.

The ELF being open to all could serve as a means of promoting an understanding of the diversity of our nation and culture. Colleges could offer bonus points for entrance to their schools to young people who have spent six months or a year in ELF. Such a period will train the young people in basic emergency skills and expose them to the economic and ethnic diversity of the US population. In this way, ELF could accomplish an education in diversity similar to that which various weighted admissions policies attempt to do today. Instead of taking people out of the ghetto and putting them in College which they might not be prepared to handle, it takes the College bound out of their world and puts them in contact with the poor and disadvantaged, working alongside them as equals under the same authority.

Young people exiting High School and considering College might well find that participating ELF for a year provides an opportunity for a break. They could move around the country, working in different ELF centers in different areas to get the basic money needed to live and see the country as a whole, moving freely from one to another as they chose in groups or individually.

If established, a year or more service in ELF would probably become an absolutely necessary qualification for public office. It would be a way of certifying a politicians acquaintance with the poor and the unemployed and their problems.

Civil vs. Servile Employment

The ELF provides Civil employment to Citizens. Citizens who work to prepare themselves to aid their fellow Citizens are performing Civil not Servile work. Let us quote Plato in his “Laws”;

The sort of work and training which is proposed for the ELF is roughly equivalent to that which Plato proposed as being appropriate to the Citizen class as opposed to servile labor for profit. Like Plato’s “Laws” it is a quasi-Spartan system. In this regard it is a sort of inversion of the normal relationship between the poor and the wealthy. The propertied classes in Greece had the leisure to devote themselves to training in Civil duties and in meeting the needs of the defense of their cities. The ability to serve as soldiers was directly related to personal wealth as the more wealth possessed the better equipment that could be bought and the more valuable the Citizen soldier.

There is traditionally a nobility associated with working and training to aid the Polis or State and ones fellow Citizens. Servile or ‘productive’ labor is comparatively speaking, traditionally the mark of the lower classes. The ELF system inverts this traditional relationship. The unemployed poor are paid to train in tasks traditionally noble and dignified. This training has always included a certain degree of military discipline and organization. The tax paying Citizens who support the system are engaged in work which would traditionally have been identified as servile. This provides a dignity to ELF which a ‘productive’ make-work system would not possess.