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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; [[ | {{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, 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. | 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. | ||
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*{{br|Thinking in Systems}} — {{author|Donella H. Meadows}} | *{{br|Thinking in Systems}} — {{author|Donella H. Meadows}} | ||
*{{br|Models.Behaving.Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality can be a Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life}} | *{{br|Models.Behaving.Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality can be a Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life}} — {{author|Emanuel Derman}} | ||
*{{br|Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies}} | *{{br|Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies}} — {{author|Charles Perrow}} | ||
*[[Diversity]] | *[[Diversity]] | ||
{{ref}} | {{ref}} | ||