1/ hmmm It's good to have terms for things - a term gives you a handle, and makes a concept easily reusable. "Seeing like a state" is one good concept. But there's a parallel one, which I think we need to pair with it: "Seeing like an economist" (or a CFO, or ...)
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2/ This is obviously not remotely a new concept. All the lefties ranting on about "late state capitalism", all the pithy "price of everything, value of nothing". But I'm suggesting that giving it a label that is complimentary to "seeing like a state" label, creates utility
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3/ And also, the number of things in a set is either 0, 1, or infinity. Meaning that once you get to 2, you've REALIZED that there's a set, and you realize what the set looks like. So the set "Seeing like a ____" consists of all of those ways of looking at the world w blinders
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4/ seeing like a state: disregarding local knowledge about mechanisms, preferring legibility in counting / enemueration / whatever seeing like a CFO is similar, but not the same thing. A CFO with his spreadsheets is very happy to plant a forest with 20,000 types of trees
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5/ ...all of them RFID tagged, and managed by Tree Inventory Management Software (from Salesforce !). ...but a CFO sees a distinct set of things as costs, or as irrelevant. Once you lay someone off, he's literally and figuratively off the books.
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6/ So a state might pay attention to unemployed people turning to drugs in their misery, but a CFO certainly wouldn't.
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7/ ...and part of the transition we've seen in domestic politics from 1970 to today is that USG has moved from "seeing like a state" to "seeing like a CFO".
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8/ what other ways of seeing are in that set? what things are those modes cognizant of? what things that the first two modes capture do these other modes miss?
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ConceptPtr @ConceptPointerReplying to @MorlockPSeeing like a CFO What they capture: Some of the sacred-ish things we value are easily quantifiable, even if we resist the belief. What they miss: There really are economically valuable things that resist measurement, and are almost impossible to produce systematically.2 replies 0 retweets 6 likesShow this thread -
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10/ I like this. I might also call it "seeing like a machinist", ... or a mechanic, or a logistics guy. The part either fits, or it doesn't. The truck either is gonna get there w the cargo by 5pm, or it's not. And, of course, all vantages have >>> https://twitter.com/Atrosto/status/1350130532634431488 …
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11/ both strengths and weaknesses. Machinists or software architects often don't think about economics, market fit, human factors, branding, feelz, etc.
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