Oh Dear! She's stuck in an infinite loop, and he's an idiot!

Waaaah! Apathy and angst snap at my brain like the devilhounds of crappy poetry and spurious metaphor! I don't know what I want to do with my life! Blogging is a chore! Why don't I enjoy writing? Why am I so lazy and behind in my tasks? I have not seen friends in... days! My eyes are burnt and rusty from the monitor's evil glare and my hands quiver from RSI! Sociophobia has left me cowering in the corner of a room, stuffing my face with peanut butter and crying deep down on the inside! There's crap all on telly and the Socceroos are going to lose by beating Uruguay 2-1 tomorrow, I can feel it! My back hurts! My teeth are rotten to the core because I don't brush them and I'm afriad of the dentist's disapproving voice if I go to get them fixed! Life is meaningless!

yeah. that felt kinda good actually.

This week, I has been mostly reading a whole bunch of books for my now months-overdue Development Studies essay. My article is basically going to be a huge beat-up job on neoliberal development and neoliberalism as an economic theory in general. The more I've been reading the more interested I've become in the idea of 'development' - the definition of which varies from person to person, and seems to get vaguer the more you think about it. One of my main criticisms of neoliberal development theory is that it pretty much isn't a development theory at all, neoliberal prescriptions (and proscriptions) to developing countries are almost entirely concerned with the structural adjustment of the economy - social, cultural, political factors barely get a look in.

To me, this seems completely arse-backwards to the point of willful blindness - development isn't just economic growth. You can have high economic growth and still have millions in poverty. Countries like Brazil and India have both got increasingly developed economies, millionaires and billionaires by the dozen alongside massive infant mortality rates and income inequality.

Is the United States a developed nation? It has the largest economy in the world, unparalleled economic, military, cultural, scientific clout - yet it has 40 million people without any kind of health insurance, crappy public education, campaigns to wipe out evolution and an infant mortality rate that has been rising since 2002, to the point where 41 countries, Cuba among them, have lower infant deaths than the US. Physical wealth and liquid capital need to be measured against how societies look after their worse off - economic growth is no guarantee of social wellbeing.