Tim Walz loves a top-down view of society to guide his top-down government interventions.
Just a few weeks before he was tapped as Kamala Harris‘ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was at a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) industry conference where he touted the power of detailed, data-rich maps to inform policy and improve society.
„The end product of these maps is a more sustainable economy, a more sustainable environment, and lifting up of people’s lives in a way that they can thrive“, Walz said at the conference, per reporting from the Minnesota Reformer.
Walz’s cartophilia is becoming a theme of his unveiling to the nation as Harris‘ veep.
A string of media reports note how the former geography teacher was an early adopter of GIS software in the classroom (where his students apparently predicted the Rwandan genocide). As governor, he’s created the Minnesota Executive Map Portfolio.
His predilection for maps highlights the two features that Democrats want to stress in Walz: his affable, nerdy dad persona and his stalwart progressive credentials. It’s allegedly something that people of all political persuasions should find compelling about him.
I’m not so sure. Advocates for minimal government who are wary of state intervention should also be very wary of an executive who puts so much faith in maps to guide policy.
This was a key insight of the late, great James C. Scott’s seminal Seeing Like a State—which detailed the efforts of „high modernist“ central planners, from 18th century Prussia to the Soviet Union, to transform their societies through rationalizing state intervention.
