![]() But it was only when you start aggregating people in large groups that just having one name doesn’t work at that level. People just had one name and it was fine because you lived in a small village and everyone knew who you were. …even giving people last names, I never thought about this, but given people last names was largely a state-led effort to control the population. Interestingly, early populations also feature throughout the author’s analysis, particularly when it comes to the legibility of systems… It’s important to not get too focused on the maps and to forget the underlying reality is significantly more complicated… This is a pretty common saying but basically the maps are not the things they describe. Whether you are an entrepreneur or a central planner or anyone just learning something, it’s important to remember that the map is not the territory. We also discuss the paradox of maps, at least conceptually… It’s not just an idea of grand architects for human society… there’s a huge body of local know-how that isn’t really written down anywhere. This is not just an idea for central planners. The vast majority of knowledge of how the system works is not contained in any book-it’s not contained in some expert’s head-it’s interwoven in all the little actors who participate in the system. They aren’t realizing that it’s just this is just the tip of the iceberg. And what was really interesting in reading this book is that people kind of assume that this simplified model of the system that they have is the system itself. … it is the idea that local knowledge comes from interacting with the system and importantly he contrasts it with “techny” which is outside this system in and of itself and tries to understand it. Next, we discuss the concept of what the author calls “mites”… This is the opposite building a map from the territory this is saying let’s take our map and make the territory more like it. So one of the advantages of this kind of simplification schema has been to impose an understanding that the state has onto the ground itself. You could have villagers and people who were not technically allowed to be pilfering from the state’s forest to go in there and do their foraging and do their regular business carrying out logs and taking things from the forest without actually being allowed to be there, because of this illegibility. Indeed, this lack of legibility of the state impacts their ability to control it. ![]() From the outside perspective of a state-particularly pre-information technology-it was very difficult for someone, let’s say a King, to send their subjects to find out, for example, how much wood is there in this forest? You couldn’t know. Think of an actual forest it’s got random trees, it’s got dead logs, it’s got wildlife and different types of plants. Scott brings up is that even though the functioning of the efficiency standpoint - whether its a farm or forest or society - they did have one powerful advantage was that they increased the legibility of the system that was being under control. ![]() If you would like to stream audio on your browser, click here listen on Soundcloud. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. My guest Trent Fowler and I discuss the book and its many insights on why well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry. In this wide-ranging and original book, James C. ScottĬompulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning theory realized in Brasilia, the Great Leap Forward in China, agricultural “modernization” in the Tropics―the twentieth century has been racked by grand utopian schemes that have inadvertently brought death and disruption to millions. This month we read Seeing Like A State by James C.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |