For a Gray Peace Corps
Semi-buried in this Jagdish Bhagwati op-ed, linked to by The American Scene is what I think to be a fantastic idea. Bhagwati, concerned that direct cash-aid to Africa will have distorting negative effects, considers more indirect ways to aid the continent, including research on crop improvement, trying to cure diseases like malaria and yellow fever, eliminating agricultural subsidies in the developed world. And then this:
The current Peace Corps system basically sends over Americans from our physically strongest but least practically skilled adult age cohort to do the nuts-and-bolts work of development: build schools and teach, build wells, hospitals, &c. This is obviously a good, noble, etc., thing, but it's worth asking if it's the optimal use of the full gamut of the human in all the societies involved. Africa, Central America, etc., have no shortage of unskilled manual labor, and I have a hard time imagining that our idealistic college students have a meaningful competitive advantage on that front. Our advantage is in skilled labor. But if that's the case, why do we systematically send our least skilled adult citizens? Obviously, we don't want to be sending over people at the heart of their careers, when they're supporting young families and generating lots of outputs for the U.S. economy. But why not recent retirees? They have enormous skill sets developed over a lifetime's work, maturity and perspective, and as much (if not more) time on their hands as a recent college grad. Honestly, who would you rather have teaching in that school in Honduras: a bunch of recently retired teachers, or the kids from Bard and UC-Santa Cruz with nothing but their BAs in peace studies and anthropology? And this is to say nothing of the other areas of development - showing how to run a modern police force / factory / farm / university/ capital market / legal system - in which "actual experience and expertise" rapidly outstrips "youthful strength and enthusiasm" as the most important characteristic for our Peace Corpsmen to have.
The major problem is obviously a motivational one: our retirees want to retire, not go gallivanting around the world doing sustainable development work with hippies. That's true, but I wonder to what extent it isn't culturally conditioned. If we had a "Gray Peace Corps" and the meme started to disseminate that for recent retirees with the right skill sets the idealistic / patriotic / humanitarian thing to do was to spend a few years working in the developing world, might we not actually start to see results?
No need to replace the existing Corps, but an interesting supplement, no?
A Gray Peace Corps could be established that deploys the senior citizens in our aging society to spend periods in Africa, where they would alleviate the enormous shortages of skills that cripple African development. The possibilities are limitless.I think this is a fascinating, brilliant idea, and one that captures nicely the central insight of, of all things, this book, which came so highly recommended by Instapundit and Professor Bainbridge: that, when one has rough and difficult work to do, the experience of a life long-lived is at least as valuable as the energy and durability of youth.
The current Peace Corps system basically sends over Americans from our physically strongest but least practically skilled adult age cohort to do the nuts-and-bolts work of development: build schools and teach, build wells, hospitals, &c. This is obviously a good, noble, etc., thing, but it's worth asking if it's the optimal use of the full gamut of the human in all the societies involved. Africa, Central America, etc., have no shortage of unskilled manual labor, and I have a hard time imagining that our idealistic college students have a meaningful competitive advantage on that front. Our advantage is in skilled labor. But if that's the case, why do we systematically send our least skilled adult citizens? Obviously, we don't want to be sending over people at the heart of their careers, when they're supporting young families and generating lots of outputs for the U.S. economy. But why not recent retirees? They have enormous skill sets developed over a lifetime's work, maturity and perspective, and as much (if not more) time on their hands as a recent college grad. Honestly, who would you rather have teaching in that school in Honduras: a bunch of recently retired teachers, or the kids from Bard and UC-Santa Cruz with nothing but their BAs in peace studies and anthropology? And this is to say nothing of the other areas of development - showing how to run a modern police force / factory / farm / university/ capital market / legal system - in which "actual experience and expertise" rapidly outstrips "youthful strength and enthusiasm" as the most important characteristic for our Peace Corpsmen to have.
The major problem is obviously a motivational one: our retirees want to retire, not go gallivanting around the world doing sustainable development work with hippies. That's true, but I wonder to what extent it isn't culturally conditioned. If we had a "Gray Peace Corps" and the meme started to disseminate that for recent retirees with the right skill sets the idealistic / patriotic / humanitarian thing to do was to spend a few years working in the developing world, might we not actually start to see results?
No need to replace the existing Corps, but an interesting supplement, no?
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