Lessons of Cambodian development

When I first thought to write this entry, I considered saving it for later to post onto my personal blog, which I'll be publishing in a few weeks to write about some adventures in my near future. You can keep an eye on www.bethanyshondark.com for that. It occurred to me, however, that the issues facing the development of Cambodia are also facing us as Americans. They involve a clash of ideologies, a clash of philosophy, a clash of values.

To give a brief history of Cambodia:
In the 1970s a Communist regime, the Khmer Rouge, took over the country and decided to institute a totally self sufficient agrarian (Communist) society. Not only were the intelligentsia useless, but they were also dangerous. When people started complaining, and later, when they started starving too much to complain, the KR knew that the educated were the ones likely to start a counter-revolution. That's why they killed them first. In the end, up to 2.5 million people died in four short years, a rate faster than the Ottomans and the Nazis' genocides. Almost everyone with a college degree, people who spoke foreign languages, who lived in cities, even people who wore glasses, were exterminated.

It is extremely interesting to see how this history impacts Cambodia to the present day. You see it in big ways and in small ways every day, something I'm sure I'll be blogging about.

There are literally thousands of development workers in Cambodia at any given time, working for religious organisations, NGOs like UNDP, as well as USAID and its counterparts in Korea, Japan, etc. When I first became interested in working in Cambodia, I gravitated towards working for one of these organisations. It became clear to me, however, that their philosophies were in direct opposition to my own. When I arrived in Cambodia, I knew I was right to teach a skill (English) verses in an NGO.

When my students looked for jobs, they gravitated towards work in the NGO world. They would lie about being Christian in order to secure a position, they would do anything. Much like a union here in the States, working for an NGO is a sweet deal. One has job protection, benefits, and a comfortable and stable salary. The best and the brightest vie for these positions, and then stagnate in offices with Westerners who tell them how to run their countries. Watching my brightest students languish in positions they were too good for was infuriating. They knew what was best for their country, and should have been the ones running it. Given the comfort and ease of letting outsiders do it, why would one of my students decide to be entrepenurial and open a business instead? I saw few take this path.

Three years ago, when I was there last, I said that I felt as though I was witnessing a crossroads in Cambodian history. In human history. Never before has a civilisation come back from the ashes and rebuilt the entire intelligentsia class from scratch. There was no domestic expertise to tap, and everything was starting from square one. It's an interesting social experiment. I still feel as though Cambodia is at a crossroads, but I don't like the Left turn that it's taking. They have learned the deadly dangers of Communism, and do not see that the Leftist NGO workers who are shaping its future are just as dangerous, even if they aren't as deadly.

I see our own country taking a Left turn. This too, disturbs me. The tendency to take the easy road, to let others determine our fates (our jobs, health care, retirement plans) in exchange for job security, is a mistake. We have seen how unions shut down European cities when their bloated (and unsustainable) benefits are at risk. This country was built on an adventuring entrepreneurial spirit. If the best and the brightest gravitate towards the easy and safe jobs, we won't be any better off than Cambodia. We have the foundation of our fore-fathers to secure our position as the world's super power, but that won't last forever. If we continue to dig the hole of debt that President Obama has turned into the Grand Canyon of debt, that foundation will disappear. If the upper class (to quote Ayn Rand: the producers) are taxed into lethargy, the beliefs that made this country the beacon of hope will disappear along with them. They'll go to Cambodia. There's no income tax there.