"Seeing Like A State" is a superb book, but I'll always remember Scott for "The Art of Not Being Governed." I was a history major in college, and seeing history from the point of view of non-state peoples was revelatory for a young student. I greatly enjoyed it, truly one of those experiences in life where my mind was opened and expanded in a new direction. I'll forever remember him for that, and be grateful for his contribution to my way of viewing the world.
+1. I had simply never considered that one reason to not be a user of the dominant technology (writing, agriculture) was that adopting would mean losing control over one’s group’s destiny.
Gives you a different lens on enterprise software adoption and implementation!
Seeing like a State sadly has some badly written chapters, including some of those not written by him. This makes the book quite a tedious read overall, alternating between deep analysis and highschool level history refresh. The Art of noy being governed is better in this regard.
I met him once but never took a class. I wish I had because I enjoyed listening to
him. Deeply knowledgeable and great intellect. We spoke mostly about the Making of the English Working Class by E. P. Thompson, which is worth reading by everyone in the US and UK (and elsewhere). The other great book by James C. Scott is Weapons of the Weak.
The concepts in Seeing Like A State are very relevant to programmers and to anyone trying to “change the world” with technology. One of the main points is that for a state to manage many people it tends to use power (hard and soft) to homogenize the populace. My belief is that tech necessarily does the same thing. Everyone in your app has permissions defined by some enum, a limited number of actions available, content moderation machinery.
This has effects that are inescapable, especially in the fields of medicine, mental health, education, social engagement. Tech makes our levers to move the Earth more efficient, but at the cost of a lack of diversity of thought, lifestyle, and value.
Diversity in [the featuresets of] software systems has led to reduced security. The only systems without the “rails” to keep the user on-track and out of danger zones are those that provide the user with the ability to program it themselves.
Must it be this way? Can we provide the complexity of flexibility while protecting our users’ finances and other important information? I don’t know if we can, but our track record isn’t good.
> Diversity in [the featuresets of] software systems has led to reduced security
citation needed.
one anecdote that comes to mind, the gnu build system had an odd assortment of machines. when they were hacked (very targeted attack) they only noticed because the malware crashed on a R6000 mips cpu or something.
That's also a good reason to make your code portable to other architectures, even if you don't intend to support them. Doing so can shake out bugs that would otherwise not be so apparent.
I think anyone in the industry would agree that at some point, the increase in exposed surface area provided by the addition of features (and the complexity to support them) has indeed decreased security at least once in the history of software. My statement doesn't say that it always leads to reduced security.
I would, however, posit that it's pretty darn close to "always."
In the context of my comment you’re thinking very small. Yes, providing more options for users can make an application less secure. But that force to make it secure is the very force I’m describing which locks down people’s options, their ability to self-express, and their options to create personal and societal value out of their actions.
Every choice a programmer makes about how to model the world is a choice that is forced upon every user of their application.
Many programmers lean left politically, but the same type of “fascistic” qualities they complain about in political leaders seems to go unquestioned when making a program, which dispassionately divides the world into rigid categories.
Technological homogeneity also creates single points of failure, as we saw this week with CrowdStrike. Heterogeneity, on the other hand, can (not will, but can) improve security outcomes.
I remember making a comment years ago about opening PDFs in PDF.js instead of Acrobat (12 years, it turns out [1] -- PDF.js had just started shipping in Firefox). At the time, Acrobat was the standard and widely exploited, but obviously none of those exploits did anything in the browser.
Still, homogeneity isn't always bad. If I were in, say, the cyber insurance racket, I'd make any company not using U2F or FIDO2 pay up. Not all choices are good choices.
It is not the "dispassionate dividing of the world into rigid categories" necessary in order to implement software that is morally or ethically problematic, it is the imposition of those rigid categories upon society at large, perhaps by itself or perhaps merely just the conflation of the separation between the categories that gets incorporated into the design as a subconscious or even conscious choice to reify the categorical differences that is the problem. It is not the knowledge itself that is the problem, it is how that knowledge gets incorporated into an overly simplistic and heavy-handed approach to act. Indeed that is the very thesis of the Seeing like a State book.
To take the first example of scientific forestry that replaced the local control over the land in which the categories were the species of plants as an example, it was not the factual knowledge about the species of plants, which is an observation about the true nature of reality, it was the decision to use that fact about the distinction between the plants and decide to separate the plants geographically to uniform monoculture plots rather than allowing them to be mixed together (and, in the process, in fact destroying things that they did not understand, the ecosystem) that is argued to have been the cause of the scientific forestry failure. The plots were just fine before and after the knowledge about what plants were where and what the different types of plants there were became known; it was the act of separating the plants into the monoculture plots. The knowledge was a necessary prerequisite to do so, but it was not sufficient, and I don't know if I could believe that accurate knowledge of actual pre-existing categories that correspond to the actual universe could by itself be wrong. Certain plants really are different than other plants, species actually exist. What you decide to do with that information is up to you, but I don't know if I could support the suppression of the acquisition of knowledge merely because it might (but also might not) be used in ways we disagree.
If they had merely studied the plants, that would not have been wrong. If they had created a map of where the plants were, that also would not have been wrong in my view. It was when they decided to change reality that the moral implications attach, in my view. They could have mapped out the plants and divided the map into categories: "there are oak trees here and not here", or "there are strawberry bushes here, and not here", and that is "dividing the world into categories" (namely: presence or absence of certain plants in certain locations), but that is merely the true expression of factual reality. It was how they decided as a separate step, "let's make all the strawberry bushes be in the same location" which incorporated many smaller actions like "let's move this strawberry bush from here to here" or "let's remove all the plants we have not specifically identified, as we (falsely) believe that they are not essential" in which reality was actually changed, and thus the moral or ethical implication attaches in my view. Those who act have a duty to act responsibly, to do no harm, and so on, and the duty scales with the scope of the action, and perhaps there is a scope of action which by itself is too large, the standard or duty of care too impossible to satisfy due to the sheer complexity, for any one person or collection of people to rightfully possess what would be obligatory in my view to have the permission to act.
I would also not view the mere publication of software as action per se either. In your example, it is the utilization of the marketing channels to push the software onto users with or without their knowledge, to exercise editorial control over what software may or may not be used on one's supposedly own device, and so on that the duty applies. If someone publishes a program that divides the world into categories, but no one uses the program, it d...
The "scientific management" was just one example out of many, and I disagree its lessons form the thesis of the book. The thesis as I understood it was that states seek legibility of domains under their jurisdiction, and the example of the forests was demonstrating the bad outcomes arising from seeking that legibility through misguided means. While unfortunate, that was an implementation error that could - and indeed was - corrected.
I'd say a much better illustrative example from the book was the introduction of last names. In that case, faced with the illegible identity of the people under its rule, a whole new construct was invented, imposed and pertains to this day. This one really opened my eyes. The whole reason we have last names at all is because our society just sort of invented them, hundreds of years ago, for its own convenience, and it was so successful we all just accept it as the way things are. Now that is seeing - and acting - like a state!
The real truth is that all 8 billion+ people plus all the world's organizations, governments, and so on, are constantly interpenetrating and co-modifying each other, every second of the day.
But no one can comprehend this, so at best, if you are literally the smartest person in the world, you might be able to get away with only a few hundred simplifying abstractions.
The average HN user probably needs tens of thousands.
So its not just states, it's everyone and everything that will ever exist.
The real question is what is the best bundle of such aids to use, at any given time?
I agree and you are correct that concept of legibility was central, however going from the text now I believe that James takes specific issue with joint combination of both the exercise of state authority as well as the blindness that is implied by high modernism. Starting on page 88:
> I believe that many of the most tragic episodes of state development in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries originate in a particularly pernicious combination of three elements. The first is the aspiration to the administrative ordering of nature and society, ... The second element is the unrestrained use of the power of the modern state as an instrument for achieving those designs. The third element is a weakened or prostrate civil society that lacks the capacity to resist those plans.
I believe my comment still stands, in responding to not the book but the author of the comment, in that framework I'm describing, assuming the thesis of the book is true, then the second element is not met by the mere publication of software. Rather it is the foisting of such software upon users that is the act of power or other covert means by which choice is restricted such as controlling the bounds of publication or else the centralizing nature of capital investment in software that by sheer bad luck it turns out that perhaps we just end up with a few pseudo monopolies because software as a capital expense is ... well, expensive to develop.
> In the context of my comment you’re thinking very small.
I am sorry that you failed to acknowledge how my comment is applicable at scale.
> [T]hat force to make it secure is the very force I’m describing which locks down people’s options, their ability to self-express, and their options to create personal and societal value out of their actions.
Yes. You see how it applies. The initial attack was uncalled for.
I find this a bit hyperbolic, a program is a tool, code is a means to build that tool, restricting the feature set of a tool is not fascistic it is a design choice that is often for the benefit of the user, although I will concede certainly not always. If the user doesn’t feel your tool gives them the right options they can pick another tool. is making a hammer that hits nails fascistic because the user could have used the raw materials to make a screwdriver? Or maybe we shouldn’t build any more programs, your favorite programing language already can edit your photos! Good luck grandma!
> My belief is that tech necessarily does the same thing [, homegenize people].
Great call out! This is very near the core of my technospiritual struggles, the issue of tech to me. First, I'd say it's important to open the framing some! Ursala Franklin contrasts perscriptive vs holistic technologies, tech which sets fixed order versus tech that expands the capability of people & craftsmem. Tech can expand not constrain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Franklin#Holistic_and_p...
> Everyone in your app has permissions defined by some enum, a limited number of actions available, content moderation machinery.
> Tech makes our levers to move the Earth more efficient, but at the cost of a lack of diversity of thought, lifestyle, and value.
The largely unexplored alternate is malleable systems, is general systems research, rather than letting capitalism take the reign & crank out endless apps at ever more massified cloudified portions & scale. We can elect to make software soft & participative. https://malleable.systems
Is just one possible model for computation. How deep our reliance on it is just makes it another of those normalizers that round off analog buzz we seem to prefer as analog meat suits.
Society is in a Goodharts Law phase; the last 50-60 years are increasingly seen as a shit measure for planning the future.
Achievement using computers as we know them is tapped out due to physical limitations. Technical success there is too specific an output to be generally applicable.
All the talk in IT about not making monoliths and the biggest portion industry is just 3 cloud providers, Python, Linux, network stacks, and the JS ecosystem.
Ignorant business machine tech is dead to gen pop who are tired of giving up their time to tap on bullshit. It’s best put to real science and management of material logistics.
Both the state and corporations want to homogenize the population.
The state wants a homogeneous population because it make it easier to obtain desired election outcomes and desired amount of power if people can be manipulated as large groups towards a limited subset of parties/options. The politician who promises "I will lower tax for the middle class by 1%" won't stand a chance if their opponent promises "I will completely abolish all taxes for the middle class."
Corporations want a homogeneous population because it makes it easier to meet consumer needs if consumers all want the same things. Also, in terms of marketing, it's easier/more effective to target people based on their social groups; then let people expend the effort required to bring themselves into alignment with the group identity... As opposed to trying to target campaigns based on complex individual needs...
When trying to create campaigns which cater to many unique individuals, there may be no clear, repeatable patterns that can drive predictable consumer behaviors. If the consumer can be tricked into adapting their own personal preferences to more closely match their group's preference... and if that group happens to be a large group, it creates predictable consumer behavior, at scale, at no cost.
E.g.
Identity = "I'm a creative individual"
-> Sales pitch = "Here, buy this Apple computer"
Identity = "I'm a moral person"
-> Sales pitch = "Here, buy this book about DEI and corporate responsibility"
Identity = "I'm a libertarian"
-> Sales pitch = "Here, buy some Bitcoin"
Identity = "I'm a highly educated and caring person"
-> Sales pitch = "Here, buy this vaccine to protect your loved ones"
> Mass production requires mass consumption, but there cannot be mass consumption without widespread identical views as to what the necessities of life are. One must be sure the market will react rapidly and massively to a given proposal or suggestion. One therefore needs fundamental psychological unity on which advertising can play with certainty when manipulating public opinion.
I'm not an anarchist, but it's a wonderful read and includes a quote that has shaped my life ever since:
> “One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called ‘Irish Democracy,’ the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.”
Scott wasn't an anarchist either - hence "Two Cheers" instead of three. He worked for the CIA in the 1960s, self-identified as a "crude Marxist" at best, didn't believe it was possible or necessary to eliminate the state - which he described as a rare but potential force for good - and was a frequent donor to the Democrats.
This was a great book. It seems less well-known in the HN-sphere than Seeing Like A State, but it's at least as good IMHO. It really changed my mental model of the dynamics of early states and "barbarians", and how agriculture interplayed with the story of how it all unfolded.
My one criticism was that when answering the question "why did people start eating grains", he never seemed to consider that it could simply be that people enjoy eating them.
I like that theory, its like how people today can't stop eating junk food even though they know its bad for them :)
Maybe it was a plot by Uruk's Big-Ag pushing subsidized barley porridge on the masses and hijacking their gut-brain axis so they left their epicurean utopia in the marshes.
Now that I think about it a little more, that general idea fits into Scott's framework of the how the constraints of cultivation, specifically that what we cultivate domesticates us in turn.
Specifically grain being so calorie dense and pleasurable that we end up becoming beholden to its growth, with significant cost. Look at all the ideas permeating these days about dangers of high carb diets, this book [1] suggesting they make us stupid for example. Or about the link between metabolic disfunction and mental disorders [2]
Ironic to see paper publishing of radical state analytics: those papers demanded a highly structured state exist, to allow complex modern phototypesetting and distribution systems to exist, and the underpinnings of mechanical, electrical and computational engineering which make it possible to mass produce books.
In order to document the state, it is necessary to at least partially exist inside the state. In order to critique the state, you depend on the state to provide the means of production of that critique. If not one state, then another. And so in like terms, your critique will be co-opted for somebody else's benefit. Thats the nature of states.
Scott was not Ayn Rand. She was apparently lucid enough to realise her core dependency on the state, and had a complex end, in state provided health care.
mass production of books originally in china was with the blessing of the state. mass production of books in europe, centuries later, started in the places with the weakest states and often over the protest of those states
i feel like the fundamental discoveries of radio, information theory, error correction coding, automata theory, language theory, type theory, mathematical logic, instruction set design, compiler optimization, etc., which form a much better medium for distribution of books than hot lead ever could, are fundamentally not that dependent on states and mass production. yes, there is a huge difference between the billion-transistor chip i'm running this browser on and the 3500-transistor cpu in a commodore 64. but the commodore was already a weapon of mass instruction, as anyone who used commodore bbses in the 80s knows
if states collapsed, would we still be able to make computers? i suspect we would, though we'd have to do a lot of innovation to adapt to the radical new environment
- seeing like a state: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like-a-state/
- the art of not being governed: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-the-art-of-not-being-governed
45 comments
[ 1.1 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadGives you a different lens on enterprise software adoption and implementation!
This has effects that are inescapable, especially in the fields of medicine, mental health, education, social engagement. Tech makes our levers to move the Earth more efficient, but at the cost of a lack of diversity of thought, lifestyle, and value.
Must it be this way? Can we provide the complexity of flexibility while protecting our users’ finances and other important information? I don’t know if we can, but our track record isn’t good.
citation needed.
one anecdote that comes to mind, the gnu build system had an odd assortment of machines. when they were hacked (very targeted attack) they only noticed because the malware crashed on a R6000 mips cpu or something.
I would, however, posit that it's pretty darn close to "always."
Every choice a programmer makes about how to model the world is a choice that is forced upon every user of their application.
Many programmers lean left politically, but the same type of “fascistic” qualities they complain about in political leaders seems to go unquestioned when making a program, which dispassionately divides the world into rigid categories.
I remember making a comment years ago about opening PDFs in PDF.js instead of Acrobat (12 years, it turns out [1] -- PDF.js had just started shipping in Firefox). At the time, Acrobat was the standard and widely exploited, but obviously none of those exploits did anything in the browser.
Still, homogeneity isn't always bad. If I were in, say, the cyber insurance racket, I'd make any company not using U2F or FIDO2 pay up. Not all choices are good choices.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4033804
To take the first example of scientific forestry that replaced the local control over the land in which the categories were the species of plants as an example, it was not the factual knowledge about the species of plants, which is an observation about the true nature of reality, it was the decision to use that fact about the distinction between the plants and decide to separate the plants geographically to uniform monoculture plots rather than allowing them to be mixed together (and, in the process, in fact destroying things that they did not understand, the ecosystem) that is argued to have been the cause of the scientific forestry failure. The plots were just fine before and after the knowledge about what plants were where and what the different types of plants there were became known; it was the act of separating the plants into the monoculture plots. The knowledge was a necessary prerequisite to do so, but it was not sufficient, and I don't know if I could believe that accurate knowledge of actual pre-existing categories that correspond to the actual universe could by itself be wrong. Certain plants really are different than other plants, species actually exist. What you decide to do with that information is up to you, but I don't know if I could support the suppression of the acquisition of knowledge merely because it might (but also might not) be used in ways we disagree.
If they had merely studied the plants, that would not have been wrong. If they had created a map of where the plants were, that also would not have been wrong in my view. It was when they decided to change reality that the moral implications attach, in my view. They could have mapped out the plants and divided the map into categories: "there are oak trees here and not here", or "there are strawberry bushes here, and not here", and that is "dividing the world into categories" (namely: presence or absence of certain plants in certain locations), but that is merely the true expression of factual reality. It was how they decided as a separate step, "let's make all the strawberry bushes be in the same location" which incorporated many smaller actions like "let's move this strawberry bush from here to here" or "let's remove all the plants we have not specifically identified, as we (falsely) believe that they are not essential" in which reality was actually changed, and thus the moral or ethical implication attaches in my view. Those who act have a duty to act responsibly, to do no harm, and so on, and the duty scales with the scope of the action, and perhaps there is a scope of action which by itself is too large, the standard or duty of care too impossible to satisfy due to the sheer complexity, for any one person or collection of people to rightfully possess what would be obligatory in my view to have the permission to act.
I would also not view the mere publication of software as action per se either. In your example, it is the utilization of the marketing channels to push the software onto users with or without their knowledge, to exercise editorial control over what software may or may not be used on one's supposedly own device, and so on that the duty applies. If someone publishes a program that divides the world into categories, but no one uses the program, it d...
I'd say a much better illustrative example from the book was the introduction of last names. In that case, faced with the illegible identity of the people under its rule, a whole new construct was invented, imposed and pertains to this day. This one really opened my eyes. The whole reason we have last names at all is because our society just sort of invented them, hundreds of years ago, for its own convenience, and it was so successful we all just accept it as the way things are. Now that is seeing - and acting - like a state!
But no one can comprehend this, so at best, if you are literally the smartest person in the world, you might be able to get away with only a few hundred simplifying abstractions.
The average HN user probably needs tens of thousands.
So its not just states, it's everyone and everything that will ever exist.
The real question is what is the best bundle of such aids to use, at any given time?
> I believe that many of the most tragic episodes of state development in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries originate in a particularly pernicious combination of three elements. The first is the aspiration to the administrative ordering of nature and society, ... The second element is the unrestrained use of the power of the modern state as an instrument for achieving those designs. The third element is a weakened or prostrate civil society that lacks the capacity to resist those plans.
I believe my comment still stands, in responding to not the book but the author of the comment, in that framework I'm describing, assuming the thesis of the book is true, then the second element is not met by the mere publication of software. Rather it is the foisting of such software upon users that is the act of power or other covert means by which choice is restricted such as controlling the bounds of publication or else the centralizing nature of capital investment in software that by sheer bad luck it turns out that perhaps we just end up with a few pseudo monopolies because software as a capital expense is ... well, expensive to develop.
I am sorry that you failed to acknowledge how my comment is applicable at scale.
> [T]hat force to make it secure is the very force I’m describing which locks down people’s options, their ability to self-express, and their options to create personal and societal value out of their actions.
Yes. You see how it applies. The initial attack was uncalled for.
Great call out! This is very near the core of my technospiritual struggles, the issue of tech to me. First, I'd say it's important to open the framing some! Ursala Franklin contrasts perscriptive vs holistic technologies, tech which sets fixed order versus tech that expands the capability of people & craftsmem. Tech can expand not constrain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Franklin#Holistic_and_p...
> Everyone in your app has permissions defined by some enum, a limited number of actions available, content moderation machinery.
Alas, yes; most tech is of this variety!
There were some very active submissions recently on Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers which is about exactly the opposite, about tech for personal & small scale itches, made as you like it. https://maggieappleton.com/home-cooked-software https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40633029 322 points, 40 days, 173 comments
> Tech makes our levers to move the Earth more efficient, but at the cost of a lack of diversity of thought, lifestyle, and value.
The largely unexplored alternate is malleable systems, is general systems research, rather than letting capitalism take the reign & crank out endless apps at ever more massified cloudified portions & scale. We can elect to make software soft & participative. https://malleable.systems
Society is in a Goodharts Law phase; the last 50-60 years are increasingly seen as a shit measure for planning the future.
Achievement using computers as we know them is tapped out due to physical limitations. Technical success there is too specific an output to be generally applicable.
All the talk in IT about not making monoliths and the biggest portion industry is just 3 cloud providers, Python, Linux, network stacks, and the JS ecosystem.
Ignorant business machine tech is dead to gen pop who are tired of giving up their time to tap on bullshit. It’s best put to real science and management of material logistics.
The state wants a homogeneous population because it make it easier to obtain desired election outcomes and desired amount of power if people can be manipulated as large groups towards a limited subset of parties/options. The politician who promises "I will lower tax for the middle class by 1%" won't stand a chance if their opponent promises "I will completely abolish all taxes for the middle class."
Corporations want a homogeneous population because it makes it easier to meet consumer needs if consumers all want the same things. Also, in terms of marketing, it's easier/more effective to target people based on their social groups; then let people expend the effort required to bring themselves into alignment with the group identity... As opposed to trying to target campaigns based on complex individual needs...
When trying to create campaigns which cater to many unique individuals, there may be no clear, repeatable patterns that can drive predictable consumer behaviors. If the consumer can be tricked into adapting their own personal preferences to more closely match their group's preference... and if that group happens to be a large group, it creates predictable consumer behavior, at scale, at no cost.
E.g.
Identity = "I'm a creative individual"
-> Sales pitch = "Here, buy this Apple computer"
Identity = "I'm a moral person"
-> Sales pitch = "Here, buy this book about DEI and corporate responsibility"
Identity = "I'm a libertarian"
-> Sales pitch = "Here, buy some Bitcoin"
Identity = "I'm a highly educated and caring person"
-> Sales pitch = "Here, buy this vaccine to protect your loved ones"
> Mass production requires mass consumption, but there cannot be mass consumption without widespread identical views as to what the necessities of life are. One must be sure the market will react rapidly and massively to a given proposal or suggestion. One therefore needs fundamental psychological unity on which advertising can play with certainty when manipulating public opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Cheers_for_Anarchism
I'm not an anarchist, but it's a wonderful read and includes a quote that has shaped my life ever since:
> “One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called ‘Irish Democracy,’ the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.”
(Only Love the Beloved Republic—in Forster’s words—deserves three cheers)
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/536292
My one criticism was that when answering the question "why did people start eating grains", he never seemed to consider that it could simply be that people enjoy eating them.
Specifically grain being so calorie dense and pleasurable that we end up becoming beholden to its growth, with significant cost. Look at all the ideas permeating these days about dangers of high carb diets, this book [1] suggesting they make us stupid for example. Or about the link between metabolic disfunction and mental disorders [2]
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17333302-grain-brain?fro...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjEFo3a1AnI
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3e05xm1jb7cd79kge7vio/Scott_P...
In order to document the state, it is necessary to at least partially exist inside the state. In order to critique the state, you depend on the state to provide the means of production of that critique. If not one state, then another. And so in like terms, your critique will be co-opted for somebody else's benefit. Thats the nature of states.
Scott was not Ayn Rand. She was apparently lucid enough to realise her core dependency on the state, and had a complex end, in state provided health care.
i feel like the fundamental discoveries of radio, information theory, error correction coding, automata theory, language theory, type theory, mathematical logic, instruction set design, compiler optimization, etc., which form a much better medium for distribution of books than hot lead ever could, are fundamentally not that dependent on states and mass production. yes, there is a huge difference between the billion-transistor chip i'm running this browser on and the 3500-transistor cpu in a commodore 64. but the commodore was already a weapon of mass instruction, as anyone who used commodore bbses in the 80s knows
if states collapsed, would we still be able to make computers? i suspect we would, though we'd have to do a lot of innovation to adapt to the radical new environment