Weirdly I find "legibility" a little ... reductionist.
It's super-easy to identify the problems with e.g. Stalinism or modern China along these lines. The problem is that humanity is constantly failing in far more chaotic ways too, and what a surprise those are more associated with anarchist capitalism or imperialism, but since they don't reduce to a nice formula you get this somewhat smug analysis of human behavior. Where is the "legibility" problem of the US invasion of Vietnam for instance? There is none because the interests (contain China, destabilize the region) were quite clear, and were achieved, despite the US "losing" the war.
(I'm also really sick of the "Gervais Principle" blather so that may be biasing me against the ribbonfarm blog though)
