Crazy Business Ideas - Paid Protesting
So, we DINKS live in Washington DC. Since the city is the nations capital, people are constantly coming here to protest. Every month or so, some big group shows up to do a political event. Last week it was the anti-abortion people, this week the anti-war people are in town.
Well, there has to be a way to make money off of this. An idea that I saw on the news was this: Paid Protesting. This basically means, getting paid to hit the streets and protest. This idea has surfaced periodically in the press (click here and here). Most of the time, paid protesters are derided and criticised. However, there are many worthy causes that don't get a lot of coverage in the newspaper or are otherwise not generally well known. Examples of these might be local environmental or social issues. When these groups want to have a rally or direct action event to raise awareness, they might need some extra bodies to show up.
That's where the paid protesting idea comes in. The idea here would be to start a service which guarantees a certain number of people to attend a political event. The business model would be to charge per head for people to show up at political protests, then pay your employees slightly less to show up at the event. For example, you might contract with a client to provide 10 protests at an event. You'd charge the client $100 per person (10*100=1000), then pay your protester/employees $75 per person (10*75=750). Your net would be $25 per person, or $250 (25*10).
Of course, you'd have to set up a website, get non-disclosure agreements, and network to get your business exposed, but I like the idea.
Best,
James
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3 comments:
This might give rise to an onerous amount of paperwork if the grass-roots lobbying part of the S1 bill becomes law.
(By the way, we'd like to meet with you at the next DC-area PF blogger get-together!) ;)
We certainly don't want more paperwork. It actually reminds me of when in Ghana they would pay people to sit in vehicles to pretend like they are full. The gig is that you don't leave the station until a given van is filled with oddles of people. Thus you want to find a vehicle that is nearly full, so it will leave the station the soonest. The drivers started catching on to this and paid random people in the station to pretend like the car was full. Thus as one person got in, another left and it took hours to leave the station. In my book this is even worse than extra paperwork, as conditions are hot and nasty.
Yes, we'll have to check out the next pfblogger event in DC. We haven't yet met any other bloggers. That would be fun.
In India it happens on a regular basis most political parties for thier ralies and protests generally organise the slum dwellers and the poor by providing them meals and arrack (cheap liqor)
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