Book Review:"Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed"

"James C. Scott's research[s] ... the recurring patterns of failure and authoritarianism in certain social engineering programs aimed at bringing such people fully into the state's fold. Soviet collectivization, the Maoist Great Leap Forward, the precisely planned city of Brasilia--these and other projects around the world, while deeply ambitious, extracted immeasurable tolls on the people they were designed to help."