I think the overall point of Rules was to highlight the stupid absurdity of bureaucracy and that in large part it only becomes what it is because of the underlying promise of state violence. I'll add that I read Rules at almost the same time that I read Capitalist Realism, and I think the lasting value of the former lies in its ability to pick at the inherent contradictions of liberal bureaucracies in a way that doesn't scare the shit out of libs. Graeber tends to be above all relatively accessible. There's a lot of talk in this thread about hiding his power level, and I'm sure there's some of that, but I don't think he did that here really. Bureaucracy is dumb and everyone hates it; you don't have to want to start a vanguard party to take a sledgehammer to civil society.