The most fundamental reason [why despotic rulers are unable to achieve their goals] is found in the lack of reliable information. ... The flaw of the system is that all acts tend to have an immediate political significance, which means that information degenerates into informing and so becomes worthless for planning purposes. Or else the information is offered that the informant believes his superiors want to hear, even if they insist on information that reflects the world as it is rather than the world as they would like it to be.

XREF: Connects to Scott's 'Seeing Like a State' on legibility and high-modernism, and to the general literature on how institutions distort information upward.

Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking…, loc. 1642