> it's incumbent upon him to clearly state what failures I will avoid
He does exactly that though? Here's a list of some of them:
Rule: "Use a strict Bash mode"
Failure(s) avoided: "your build may keep executing even if there was a failure in one of the targets."
Rule: .ONESHELL
Failure(s) avoided: assignments failing to take effect on subsequent lines ("it lets you do things like loops, variable assignments and so on in bash")
Rule: .DELETE_ON_ERROR
Failure(s) avoided: "ensures the next time you run Make, it’ll properly re-run the failed rule, and guards against broken files"
Rule: MAKEFLAGS += --warn-undefined-variables
Failure(s) avoided: avoids silent misbehavior when a variable doesn't exist ("if you are referring to Make variables that don’t exist, that’s probably wrong and it’s good to get a warning")