James C. Scott
When governments impose rigid, mathematical order on complex human societies, the results are often catastrophic. Discover why well-intentioned, top-down schemes routinely destroy the organic communities and ecosystems they aim to help.
States naturally strive to make their subjects and environments legible by imposing standardized measurements, permanent surnames, and cadastral maps to facilitate taxation and control.
High modernism is a dangerous ideology that treats society as a blank slate, trusting exclusively in scientific progress and technical design while sweeping aside history and tradition.
Disastrous social engineering occurs when the state's drive for legibility and high modernist ideology are combined with coercive authoritarian power and a civil society too weak to resist.