I thought Milo had wandered from smintheus' posts into my posts, this time in search of a two-tone blue on blue 1956 Studebaker President when I stumbled across this news story: WTO Announces Formalized Slavery Model for Africa.

The strory says:

Philadelphia - At a Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa, World Trade Organization representative Hanniford Schmidt announced the creation of a WTO initiative for "full private stewardry of labor" for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa's free trade with the West.

The initiative will require Western companies doing business in some parts of Africa to own their workers outright. Schmidt recounted how private stewardship has been successfully applied to transport, power, water, traditional knowledge, and even the human genome. The WTO's "full private stewardry" program will extend these successes to (re)privatize humans themselves.

"Full, untrammelled stewardry is the best available solution to African poverty, and the inevitable result of free-market theory," Schmidt told more than 150 attendees. Schmidt acknowledged that the stewardry program was similar in many ways to slavery, but explained that just as "compassionate conservatism" has polished the rough edges on labor relations in industrialized countries, full stewardry, or "compassionate slavery," could be a similar boon to developing ones.
. . .
To prove that human stewardry can work, Schmidt cited a proposal by a free-market think tank to save whales by selling them. "Those who don't like whaling can purchase rights to specific whales or groups of whales in order to stop those particular whales from getting whaled as much," he explained. Similarly, the market in Third-World humans will "empower" caring First Worlders to help them, Schmidt said.

One conference attendee asked what incentive employers had to remain as stewards once their employees are too old to work or reproduce. Schmidt responded that a large new biotech market would answer that worry. He then reminded the audience that this was the only possible solution under free-market theory.

You can find links to this and other news stories at http://www.gatt.org/- and those of you who recall the Yes Men, may recall that this is their site - not that of the real GATT or WTO - though they no doubt wish they that thought of it first.

• satire,
• GATT,
• WTO,
• yes-men