I have been reading James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State, which argues repeatedly that centrally planned communities and economies cannot subsist without the unsanctioned return of small-scale, below-the-radar activity of people forced to circumvent the master plan.
The quick-fire examples below, offered in a final-chapter overview, brought me up short. The workarounds prompted by a "formal command economy" have been elaborated in depth and reiterated throughout the book. What got my attention is the throwaway final sentence, asserting something that has been not elaborated at all in preceding chapters:
Many modern cities, and not just those in the Third World, function and survive by virtue of slums and squatter settlements whose residents provide essential services. A formal command economy, as we have seen, is contingent on petty trade, bartering, and deals that are typically illegal. A formal economy of pension systems, social security, and medical benefits is underwritten by a mobile, floating population with few of these protections (p. 352, Kindle edition).
