Seeing Like a State: The Hidden Logic Behind History’s Greatest Failures (James C. Scott)

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From a distance, the aesthetic is one of perfect, geometric order. Imagine a Soviet collective farm viewed from the air: vast, uniform fields of a single crop, laid out in precise squares. Or consider Brasília, Brazil’s planned capital, with its monumental axes and uniform residential superblocks, a city built from scratch to embody a rational ideal. These are landscapes of pure design, testaments to a plan imposed upon an unruly world. Yet this visual perfection masks a landscape of human tragedy—of famine, coercion, ecological collapse, and social alienation.

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