Seeing Like a State

Why have so many schemes to improve the human condition not worked or even backfired? In this brilliant work, I learned how we need to simplify the world if we want to govern it.

In any domain for which we aim to develop policies, we are forced to define relevant indicators and create a carbon copy of reality full of arbitrary choices. I loved how Scott makes this visible with examples from forests to cities. And how these choices lead to a variety of unexpected consequences that often render interventions ineffective.

The book makes you see that the problem is… show more.

Bear with me; this is an academic book—but it doesn’t read like one. Instead, it’s a book of stories about how attempts (often well-meaning) to shape modern society have dramatically failed those they intended to help.

Much of the book is about how the government learned to “see” its people and the often disastrous consequences of state intervention. You may have to take the conclusions with a fine grain of salt if you are not as radical as Scott, but I can honestly say that no book has ever changed the way I see the world like this one. 

Have you ever wondered why we can’t just make the world better? Sure, we’ve made enormous strides in agriculture and medicine over the past few centuries. We can generate electricity and move around the world in a day. We can feed and heal people. But why haven’t we just sat down and figured out the right way to live? Planned it all out on a clean sheet, like an architect.

Seeing Like a State is a book about why it’s impossible for ambitious programs of top-down control to succeed, and why they so often end up with millions of people… show more.

The fifth book is Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott which teaches how the state makes people legible and controllable by naming them, giving them addresses, marking them, or moving them.