31. Finding Jobs
Absolutely any human being should be able to submit a report (by any means, such as through telephone, e-mail, etc.) to a public agency responsible for keeping a database of all types of aesthetic pollution or blemishes in existence on and around public infrastructures.
Law enforcement institutions and those working closely with them who are responsible for handing the punishment of lawbreakers such as prisons, correctional facilities, fine collection agencies, etc., should also be responsible for organizing and operating a system that trains and matches willing eligible criminals currently going through the criminal justice system with properly performing jobs geared to the elimination of such aesthetic blemishes, especially around areas frequented by tourists. These criminal workers would be paid for their labor, and these payments would go towards paying for all costs associated with their crimes, including any punitive penalties imposed.
Such jobs may include things like patching and painting chipped, cracked or damaged curbs, sidewalks, walls, etc., repair scratches on everything in public view, cleaning graffiti and doing normal cleaning of everything in public view, especially street signs, pulling weeds, sweeping gutters, maintaining gardens in parks or on road island strips and grassy areas, removing gum spots on sidewalks, etc. All such jobs would be related to improving (mainly aesthetically) public infrastructures. Maybe they could also be assigned to monitoring public surveillance cameras searching for people committing crimes such as littering or writing graffiti. Another job could be to pull out and destroy harmful exotic plants and maybe even capture undesirable animals from the environment. The work could also consist of things like cleaning public (or private) property, pulling out exotic/damaging species of life, gardening/landscaping, sifting garbage for recycling, etc. One example, could be cutting the grass of a local public park. Even greater pay could be offered to workers if they are able to use their own machinery, such as lawnmower, in this example.
Many methods can be used to choose which workers should do which jobs, and the workers who bid lowest would get the jobs. All of the worker’s earnings would go to pay off the fine for his crime.
Work through this organization would be available primarily to people who have broken the law, not to the general public. However, other people may apply to do the same jobs through this organization, but they would be able to work and receive pay through this organization only if an insufficient number of criminals are available.
The government should maintain a comprehensive listing of job availability for anyone to search through. All kinds of jobs should be listed here, from the mundane, low-skilled ones to the high-skilled ones. Part-time, full-time and even micro-working and micro-volunteering job opportunities should be listed. Employers should be able to post reviews of their current or former employees so that other employers could get a better feeling for what kind of potential employee that person would be. Employees should also be able to post reviews of their current or former employers, as well.
People looking to work the next day should be able to search this database the night before and register for one of the listed job opportunities. Each job opportunity would have a fairly detailed description of the type of work involved. Potential registrants would be told what time to arrive and how the pay is structured. Information on how to dress, what to bring (tools, clothing, etc.) etc., could be found within this database.
Pay could be structured either as hourly pay, or pay per unit of work completed. Pay would be fairly low to discourage people from maintaining these jobs indefinitely, though pay would not be in violation of applicable minimum wage laws.
Ideally, at least most of these jobs should be flexible enough to enable the usage of an unreliable and potentially widely fluctuating labor force. A worker could work for only one day or any number of days and could choose which days to works.