> Here, I propose Scott’s Law: never put order in a system before you understand the structure underneath its chaos.
James C. Scott wouldn't probably never underwrite re-ordering of systems from the top down.
Central to his argument is that viewing complex systems from any singular position requires a process of simplification (legibility) that prevents a complete understanding.
The presumption that one has gotten to a place of "understand[ing] the structure underneath [the] chaos" is in fact the false confidence he attributes to most of these ordering projects.
I think if you want to wrangle a suggestion from Scott's book, it's more about making lots of small pokes at a system and seeing how it reacts, and slowly building on positive reactions from the system.
(Also, messiness and complexity are not intrinsically linked to the efficiency of a system — systems can optimize for lots of variables and it's really context-specific. So as much as you shouldn't take order to be innately good, don't take messy to be innately efficient!)