I replied to a comment on a post a week or two ago, saying that I will always upvote any comments which clearly demonstrate that the commenter has read my post. As I wrote my reply, I realised that I was actually offering jobs to people - read my stuff and write a comment in exchange for pay.
Right now, it's a nano-sized job guarantee because my upvote is far from being enough for a person to live on. But what would be enough?
Some Quick Calculations
I looked up how much my upvote would be worth if I had 100,000 SP and it'd be SBD 37.08. After curation, the other person would get SBD 13.905 plus some SP.
Assuming an exchange rate of US$6 per SBD, that would mean that they get USD 83.43 per upvote after curation. I'm going to assume that they just hold onto the SP and don't try to cash it in.
If they get one upvote per day, 7 days per week, they'd earn USD 584.01, which isn't too shabby!
That's just below the average salaries in Spain and Israel and well above those in Greece and Portugal before tax is even deducted! With 10 full upvotes per day, I could employ 10 people. If I were to decrease the value of the upvote, I could fully employ many times more in poorer countries.
I don't know what they'd get after paying taxes or what the fees would be for converting SBD into their local currency, but it could certainly give some breathing space to someone who's in dire straights.
I've been active on Steemit for around one and a half months and I'm hours away from reaching the 100 SP milestone. I just need to keep doing what I'm doing for another 125 years...
Additional Thoughts
What if These people weren't just commenting on my posts? What if they were doing something to help their communities? What if they were doing something to help their communities and our community?
I imagine that creating an innovative program to create full-time jobs using cryptocurrency is a story that would get picked up by at least one news agency.
I don't know if it's true, but I read that the average salary in Venezuela (after tax) is just over USD 33. Surely we can pull together to create at least one job for someone there?
My Request
Spread the word about this idea and let's see if it takes hold.