rcmnd

Seeing Like a StateBook

by James C. Scott, 1998

Who uses, recommends or left Seeing Like a State, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

2 people

Psychiatrist and blogger, author of Slate Star Codex and its successor Astral Codex Ten.
loved

Seeing Like A State is the book G.K. Chesterton would have written if he had gone into economic history instead of literature. Since he didn't, James Scott had to write it a century later. The wait was worth it.

SSC review of Scott's book on high-modernist state planning; opening verdict.

2017-03-16·slatestarcodex.com ↗

Investor and writer; former CTO of Coinbase, author of The Network State, and founder of Network School.
recommended

A New Idea of India, China's Political Model, Seeing Like a State, Tomorrow the World, From Third World to First, When Money Dies, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

The draft reading list for his Network School, in the “Political Case Studies” section.

2025-02-02·balajis.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.