Seeing Like a State — Every system here had to make you legible

To run anything at scale, a state first has to simplify it: surnames, street addresses, standard units, land registries, timetables. The map is always thinner than the ground it describes. James C. Scott's argument is that the damage starts when planners forget that, and rebuild the ground to match the map.

• Every card in this volume is a version of the same move. A system made the world legible enough to run, and the world quietly routed around it.
• The counterweight is local knowledge: the unwritten skill of the people actually doing the work. Plans that ignore it tend to fail slowly and then expensively.