19:39 – It’s important to note that we’re all beneficiaries of modernism and even the less arrogant versions of high modernism.
https://media.transistor.fm/c33d7360/385ead82.mp3
James C. Scott’s /Seeing Like a State/, part one page 
Public health is a case where a scientific elite used science to improve people’s lives, in part by, um, fixing people. The US Centers for Disease Control is in Atlanta, Georgia, because malaria used to be endemic in the US south. Now it’s not – a case where “Seeing like a State” worked well.
20:07 – And, while scientific agriculture was a disaster in the Soviet Union, many of the same ideas – like a concentration on crops that reward scale: maize and soybeans – have worked well in the US Midwest.
Scott is primarily interested in cases where “seeing like a state” didn’t work, and so does Brian Marick.
20:29 – Here are two relevant quotes that hint at why high modernist “schemes to improve the human condition” often fail.
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