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Legibility & Control: Themes in the Work of James C. Scott

… In every case, power distorts the flow of information and the incentive to produce as efficiently as possible. The existence of people in authority who exist in a zero-sum relationship economically with those from whom they extract rents, whether in the state or in the hierarchy that governs an institution, creates an incentive for those below to minimize their legibility (and hence the extractability of rents) to those above. It creates an incentive to structure their productive activity so as to minimize the extractability of rents, even at the cost of producing less efficiently. In a zero-sum relationship, the producers—just as much as the parasites—have an incentive to maximize the size of their share of the pie at the expense of the size of the pie as a whole. 

In short authority, far from being the remedy for the war of all against all, is its cause. And in so doing, it destroys rationality, knowledge, and cooperation.