OK now Sea Citizen, you haven't been hitting your production targets... This is the third month you've failed to qualify for the monthly "bonus" scrip. After rent and commissary, I'm afraid that puts you in the red. And I don't have to tell you what that means.

There aren't any open positions higher up, and you aren't exactly a top performer. The only way I see you digging out of this is signing up for the Human Initiative Project. A couple injections a week, plus your regular salary, and you'll have more than enough scrip.

Don't believe the rumors, you'll be just fine.

One of the stated goals of the project is to create employment in undeveloped regions. The plight of the unemployed in the 3rd world has never been cake and candy. Unemployed people struggle even in developed countries.

Another interesting contrast to your hypothetical is that in the US people are free to volunteer for paid clinical trials. Yet somehow you imagine the proposed alternative to be entirely malicious...

https://clinicalcenter.nih.gov/recruit/volunteers.html

Leaving aside the issues with exploitation inherent in using power imbalance to experiment on the poor the OP is talking about a situation where you are “voluntold” and have not volunteered.

As opposed to the power differential between a federally funded, government operated research facility and poor US citizens? Would be nice if the OP could cite where residents of the special economic zone will be coerced.

Pretty sure the whole point of all of this is that it is voluntary.

People are free to leave, if they don't like living in the special economic zone.

Unless they're paid in scrip, which you know they would be

Special economic zones exist in all parts of the world.

And people are able to freely leave them, lol.

Special economic zones like the UAE?

There are all sorts of special economic zones which are not some made up fantasy land that you read in a book.

This one would be literally run by the UK. I don't think the modern day UK is going to be holding people against their will, in their country. People are able to freely leave the UK, whenever they want.

You can’t have anything really consensual if there is a big power differential and the party with more power is willing to use it and allowed to do so. We have seen multiple times in history that this leads to slavery, servitude or other forms of exploitation.

I’ll start with this one...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2917810/elephant-man-drug-test...