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Exactly ''why'' there is this collective affliction of [[wilful blindness]] to our administrative compulsion is a great, unexplored topic of our age. That so many, great and small, have so much to lose by exploring it may explain the mystery. | Exactly ''why'' there is this collective affliction of [[wilful blindness]] to our administrative compulsion is a great, unexplored topic of our age. That so many, great and small, have so much to lose by exploring it may explain the mystery. | ||
{{br|Seeing Like a State}} takes as its thesis how well-intended patrician government can, in some circumstances, lead to utter disaster. While Scott’s examples are legion, one could — and some do — criticise him for his anecdotal approach: he has curated examples that best fit his thesis, and it therefore suffers from insoluble [[confirmation bias]]. That may be true, but I don’t think it matters, for Scott’s thesis is so ''familiar'', so ''plausible'' and its exhortations so consistent with other theories in adjacent fields,<ref>{{author|Charles Perrow}}’s {{br|Normal Accidents}} theory; [[Systems Theory]] as expounded by {{author|Donella H. Meadows}}, {{author|Thomas Kuhn}}’s {{br|The Structure of Scientific Revolutions}}</ref> that it is hard to be bothered by a lack of empirical rigour. This stuff all stands to reason. Data is not its value: Scott’s ''[[narrative]]'' is its value, as a counter-narrative to modern statist (and corporate) orthodoxy, and that in itself is valuable and enlightening. | {{br|Seeing Like a State}} takes as its thesis how well-intended patrician government can, in some circumstances, lead to utter disaster. While Scott’s examples are legion, one could — and some do — criticise him for his anecdotal approach: he has curated examples that best fit his thesis, and it therefore suffers from insoluble [[confirmation bias]]. That may be true, but I don’t think it matters, for Scott’s thesis is so ''familiar'', so ''plausible'' and its exhortations so consistent with other theories in adjacent fields,<ref>{{author|Charles Perrow}}’s {{br|Normal Accidents}} theory; [[Systems Theory]] as expounded by {{author|Donella H. Meadows}}, {{author|Thomas Kuhn}}’s {{br|The Structure of Scientific Revolutions}}</ref> that it is hard to be bothered by a lack of empirical rigour. This stuff all stands to reason. Data is not its value: Scott’s ''[[narrative]]'' is its value, as a counter-narrative to modern statist (and corporate) orthodoxy — that some gilded superman, sitting at the top of the heap magically pulls levers for the betterment of all — and that, in itself, is valuable and enlightening. | ||
In any case, bureaucratic disaster is | In any case, Scott does not say that top-down bureaucratic disaster is inevitable, but notes the same four conditions are present wherever we find it: a will to bend nature — and the polity — to the administrator’s agenda; a [[high modernism|“high modernist” ideology]] that holds that that all problems can be anticipated and solved in time with the necessary organisation, application and empirical rigour; an authoritarian state, with machinery to impose its ideological modernist vision; and a subjugated citizenry (or staff) without the means (or inclination) to resist the machinations of the administrator. | ||
These qualities, of course, pertain in any autocratic polity. They are also a characteristic of the modern multinational corporation. If you are interested in how ''not'' to run one, {{br|Seeing Like a State}} is worth a close read. | |||
===[[Legibility]]: the administrative ordering of nature and society === | ===[[Legibility]]: the administrative ordering of nature and society === |