Interestingly enough rsync shipped with Mac OS X 10.13 is stuck in the past at version 2.6.9. This is rather unfortunate because if you attempt to use this version of rsync with a modern 3.x version you will receive the dreaded rsync error (code 23):
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at /BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/rsync/rsync-51/rsync/main.c(996) [sender=2.6.9]
The easy fix is to use either Mac Ports or Homebrew to upgrade your Mac’s version of rsync to the latest 3.x variant.
receiving file list ... done
rsync: open "/Users/mikel/Documents/your-life-contest-2014-complete-3001.csv" failed: Permission denied (13)
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (103 bytes received so far) [generator]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at /BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/rsync/rsync-52/rsync/io.c(453) [generator=2.6.9]
Upgrading is is the easy part, but once you have the new version installed it will be in a different location from the default 2.6.9 version of rsync installed by Mac OS X. The default location is `/usr/bin/rsync and brew typically installs it’s version into /usr/local/bin/rsync. Unless you alter the path you will continue to use the default version.