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Yeah, on the face of it the Tau are the ultimate Communist ideal; everyone obligingly accepts their predetermined role in society and the resulting progress is both hard-won and morally perfect.

However, nowhere are crime and dissent statistics explored, so we have no real way of knowing how successful the Tau model of civilisation really is.

And I suspect this is the point of their inclusion. I've heard people call them 'not Grimdark enough' and 'too utopian' for the 40k universe, but for me it's the very lack of an apparent dark side that highlights the inherent dubiousness of less extreme real-world examples and generates genuine self-criticism in all who view it with reflexive, unfounded suspicion.

Is the success of the Tau really too good to be true, or are we simply so jaded and bitter that we can't accept a genuinely good thing? And, more to the point, does this incredulous response betray our own incurable unsuitability for inclusion in such a society?

It's this sort of moral intrigue that makes the 40k universe such a great thing.