When not operating under the name of reform, the business perspective take on the name of development. The ostensible desire to make things better. Development, like reform, is sold as the solution but becomes the problem. What is limiting about development, as with reform, is the context out of which it  operates. No development occurs within the context that there is too little to go around, that self-interest is our nature, and that more leadership, more controls, more efficiency, more innovation, larger scale, better management will be useful.

 These all constitute the idea of development. The modern industrial and information era is constantly sold on the universal promise of “development.” It began in the 18th century as economic development –– turning  peasants into consumers, creating a middle class, producing more leisure –– turns into the development of just about everything: ourselves, our relationships, our children, our economies, other countries, and the land around us. We are presumably a work in progress, our relationships have become networks, we export our consumer way of life to “developing countries,” and we have the notion if you cannot build on the land, what use is it? In these ways, “development” is the business case for maintaining dominion over the earth and its inhabitants. Despite its innocent and well-meaning overtones, development has become the rationalization for empire.