Seeing Like A State

[selfishgene]

Seeing Like A State

Comments

[squid314]

Step 1: Cherry-pick data-points from history
Step 2: Lump them into a category with a provocative name
Step 3: Emphasize the costs of things in category, and the benefits of things outside the category
Step 4: Ignore counterexamples
Step 5: Use as evidence for a political idea you believed already
Step 6: Profit

[selfishgene]

Unfortunately all study of history involves cherry picking data. On July 20th 1944 Hitler was nearly killed. That same day an obscure man in Patagonia had a really good morning shit which he noted in his diary. Which fact is more relevant to historical investigation? Short of disregarding all history, there is no solution to each historian picking the data he deems relevant.

[squid314]

Yes, but there is an art to picking especially representative data, rather than data that supports a specific point. For example, on June 3 1920, Hitler smiled at a little child. On August 19 1931, Hitler pet a kitten. On January 5 1942, Hitler gave money to a beggar. One could write a book including *just* these three data points and use it to prove Hitler was a nice guy, but because these data points have been cherry-picked poorly and with malice, one could rightly accuse that book of being inaccurate because it cherry-picked data.

[radtea]

Right, so on what factual basis are you accusing the author in question here of cherry-picking?

[hypnos7]

The conceit of "high modernism" was that organic, local economies could not possibly be more efficient that central planning. It does not follow that there is no role for central planning where there are market failures, and thus I don't see how this supports anarchism.

However, it may *explain* the historical motivation of anarchists in Europe, which found itself transitioning directly from monarchism to totalitarianism with no republic in between.

[madfilkentist]

It isn't necessary to invoke a need for central planning to reject anarchism. The basic problem is the "watching the watchmen" issue, with regard to the minimum of force which is necessary in a free society. Anarchists argue that the right of defensive force can't be restricted to just those who are deemed the government, but they've never provided a satisfactory answer to how force without oversight can be kept from becoming a tyranny of its own.

[selfishgene]

'how force without oversight can be kept from becoming a tyranny of its own' - exactly who has oversight of the government? Has your watchful oversight prevented torture at Abu Ghraib?
In an anarchy use of force can be met with force. As long as the population have any weapons they wish and can afford they will always outmatch any smaller coercive group. And since any population can only support a minority of parasites/predators it follows that the coercive group will always be a lot smaller.

[selfishgene]

In fact Scott does not argue that his book supports anarchism, that is my interpretation. Scott shows that central planners not only map a simplification of the real world (map is not the territory idea) but they soon start forcing the real world to be like their map. Village houses are destroyed for being out of the straight line of houses. This is not more efficient for farming, even in the central planners' view, but it is easier for them to count the houses. Of course destroying a family home is a fairly small atrocity but it is also done for a trivial reason. If central planning inexorably leads to atrocities, even when not done for personal enrichment of the planners, then mere market failure doesn't seem that bad. Every description of market failure I have ever heard turns out to be one of two things