Seeing Like a Boss
(cross-posted from my Substack)
Seeing Like a Boss
Thoughts after reading Seeing Like a State
I recently finished reading Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott and thought it was interesting. I first heard about the book by reading Scott Alexander’s review of it some years ago, and the impression I got was that the book’s central thesis was in the same vein as Hayek’s argument against central planning, combined with a criticism of experts arrogantly imposing schemes from above onto people who have local wisdom.[1] While that impression isn’t wrong, I think the argument ends up being slightly more nuanced. I was motivated to read the whole book because philosopher C. Thi Nguyen mentioned it as being influential in his thinking about Value Capture, which I’ve posted about previously, so that framework (and thinking about human agency, which is related to Nguyen’s arguments about games) were in my mind as I was reading.
Forests and Trees
The book lays out its argument somewhat impressionistically, with a series of illustrative stories about how a central authority needs legibility into something so that it can be managed in the way “the state” needs. But that’s difficult, and if the state is powerful enough it can end up “simplifying” the territory to conform to it’s map rather than understanding the thing it’s trying to manage. One early example is German scientific forestry: In the age of sailing ships timber was a hugely important industry, and states had an understandable interest in knowing what resources they had and exploiting them effectively. Trees largely grow in forests, which tend to be random, haphazard places, so cataloging what is there is difficult, and cutting and extracting the wood is also difficult. So over time it occurs to them: why not just start planting the best kind of tree in nice orderly rows, optimally spaced from each other, with no extra obstacles growing in the way? And for a while it works great, until the downsides of a monoculture start to manifest: any blight or pests that can affect one can spread to a neighbor, which is equally susceptible and just so happens to have other nearly-identical neighbors that are also great hosts for that parasite, etc. Plus, when all of the plants are extracting identical nutrients from the soil it’s harder to maintain its fertility. They had the reverse of a not-seeing-the-forest-for-the-trees problem: the way they wanted to see the forest as composed of only a few important variables was imposed onto the trees. But some of those other variables were important to the health of a forest and, ultimately, each individual tree in it.
High Modernism
The case studies in the book are presented as failures of an ideology that Seeing Like a State calls High Modernism:
What is high modernism, then? It is best conceived as a strong (one might even say muscle-bound) version of the beliefs in scientific and technical progress that were associated with industrialization in Western Europe and in North America from roughly 1830 until World War I. At its center was a supreme self-confidence about continued linear progress, the development of scientific and technical knowledge, the expansion of production, the rational design of social order, the growing satisfaction of human needs, and, not least, an increasing control over nature (including human nature) commensurate with scientific understanding of natural laws.
While nobody self-identifies as a High Modernist, the book categorizes some people in different times and places as embodying this way of thinking. It arguably manifested most often in revolutionary, colonial, or post-colonial situations because they combined both the desire for radical change with the ability of centralized authority to attempt to implement it.
I don’t like the look of that
The book notes that the mindset it’s critiquing lends itself toward an aesthetic viewpoint – it’s an ideology of miniature models and aerial views, not one that engages from the bottom up or the middle out. It wants things to be neat and in their place.
The metaphor that comes to mind in this connection is that of an army drawn up on the parade ground as opposed to an army engaged in combat with the enemy. In the first case is a tidy visual order created by units and ranks drawn up in straight lines. But it is an army doing nothing, an army on display. An army at war will not display the same orderly arrangement, but it will be, in [urban planning critic Jane] Jacobs's terms, an army doing what it was trained to do.
Sure thing, boss
The idea that kept coming to mind for me as I was reading the book wasn’t the overzealous revolutionary, but the stereotypical boss: The kind of person who sees their job as shouting about anything that “doesn’t look right”, and who doesn’t want to hear any “backtalk”. The only information they want to hear is that everything’s fine. The strong power differential and focus on the appearance of proper functioning creates an environment of fragile facades – things that look like they fit but that can’t bear loads. I’m using the word “boss” in a way that contrasts it with nearby concepts like “leader” (someone who sets out a vision for where to go) or “manager” (someone who does the job of organizing and coordinating, arranging what they have to take best advantage of the particularities). And I think there’s an element of the boss being insulated from agency as well: they’re not saying “here is a thing that I want you to do”, the thing other people should be doing is external as if it’s obvious, but fools and idiots refuse to do it out of stubbornness or some other character flaw.
It seems to me that this mindset tends to view agency as a bug rather than a feature. A boss doesn’t see an underling as someone with their own dynamism and ingenuity, they see a frustratingly unreliable automaton. Scaled up, I think this maps to the way that the “shareholder value” mindset has led some companies to squeeze out any slack or capacity for resilience to become organizations that please financial analysts but that crack under any unexpected pressure. I think it can also be seen in the phenomenon of audience capture: the informational crudeness of the equivalent of cheers and boos from fans can make people nervous about doing anything but becoming a caricature of themselves, it’s not necessarily the actual audience but the idea of the audience that is a crude ogre that must be placated. I think we can also see this when we engage in empty platitudes, cynicism, or internet irony rather than earnest, particular engagement on something. As humans sometimes we need things that are safe and reliable!
And I hesitate to get political, but I also wonder if this mindset is manifested in partisan politics. As originally constituted, legislatures like the US Congress were supposed to be deliberative bodies, places where lots of independent agents would discuss proposals and implement policies that had sufficient agreement. Voting blocs, factions, and ultimately political parties were a hack on that system: it’s a strategic realization that if a group all votes together the vote is more likely to go their way. In that framework, deviation from the party line is something that you need to be angry about: a legislator who makes their own decisions issue-by-issue can look like a defective vote-bot, they should be doing what they’re told by the party bosses! Many proposed political reforms like proportional representation treat political parties as if they’re natural kinds, but it’s not clear to me that makes sense in terms of thinking about the agency of voters and representatives.
So what’s the solution?
I think it’s fair to say that Seeing Like a State is much clearer about what it’s against than what it’s for. The crude takeaway would be opposition to science or progress and in favor of adherence to tradition and the wisdom of the past. But in the parts where he is praising “metis” I think the book is advocating a more “tools in the toolbox” approach: Science is unparalleled at what it does, but the way experiments require time, space, and isolated variables means that science is unlikely to be able to give you 100% comprehensive answers at any given time. It can tell people useful things, but in any important domain a practitioner is likely to be operating on a frontier where wisdom and judgment are still necessary in making good decisions about the best step to take. I think the book is endorsing science, technology, and progress, but is wary of it being imposed from the top down – it wants it to come in from the side: agricultural scientists and practical farmers both having important (but different) roles to play. Philosopher-kings are probably bad philosophers and bad kings, but it can be good to have philosophers in your democracy.
[1] The book also explores the history of establishing fixed names as an element of the state’s needs for taxation and conscription. The fact that I’m mentioning two different people with “Scott” in their name early in this piece makes me sympathetic to the problem they were facing.