Seeing like a State
JC revisits James C. Scott’s classic takedown of high-modernism. A parable for our times.

No battle — Tarutino, Borodino, or Austerlitz — takes place as those who planned it anticipated. That is an essential condition.
—Tolstoy, War and Peace
Business, and government, suffers from a kind of physics envy.
—Rory Sutherland, citing Paul Ormerod
In sum, the legibility of a society provides th…
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