The "scientific management" was just one example out of many, and I disagree its lessons form the thesis of the book. The thesis as I understood it was that states seek legibility of domains under their jurisdiction, and the example of the forests was demonstrating the bad outcomes arising from seeking that legibility through misguided means. While unfortunate, that was an implementation error that could - and indeed was - corrected.

I'd say a much better illustrative example from the book was the introduction of last names. In that case, faced with the illegible identity of the people under its rule, a whole new construct was invented, imposed and pertains to this day. This one really opened my eyes. The whole reason we have last names at all is because our society just sort of invented them, hundreds of years ago, for its own convenience, and it was so successful we all just accept it as the way things are. Now that is seeing - and acting - like a state!