"Like a religious faith, this visual codification was almost impervious to criticism or disconfirming evidence. The belief in large farms, monocropping, 'proper' villages, tractor-plowed fields, and collective or communal farming was an aesthetic conviction undergirded by a conviction that this was the way in which the world was heading--a teleology."

James C. Scott, "Seeing Like a State", on disastrous state programs of forced resettlement and villagized farming.