Fences and FAFO

You come upon an old fence, you think about tearing it down. Should you? GK Chesterton asked you to think about who put it up and why.

Chesterton’s Fence is the principle that before removing or changing an existing rule, law, or structure, you should first understand why it was put there in the first place. It warns against reckless reform by emphasizing that many things exist for reasons that may not be immediately obvious. Only after understanding the original purpose can you determine whether the "fence" is outdated and should be removed—or if it still serves a vital function.

You come upon an old government, you think about tearing it down. Should you? A drug-addled billionaire says “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

FAFO ("F*** Around and Find Out") is the principle that the best way to learn or discover the consequences of an action is to try it and see what happens. It embodies an accelerationist¹ and trial-and-error approach, where direct deconstruction reveals real-world outcomes.

So we might all want the same end (in fact we don’t, but we might), but the question of means — how to get to that end — still matters. The Process matters as much as the Outcome in a particular case, because if the Process is broken here, it can be more easily broken everywhere else.

Now is the process bloated? Yes, of course. We have loads of examples of where the process itself has been weaponised to avoid changes that the process wielders dislike and others like. NIMBYs have weaponised environmental regulations to add costs, defer, delay, and perhaps prohibit additional density in their neighbourhoods.

So how do we achieve the outcome?

Take for instance the question of University Overheads. Universities, like other organisations, have some overhead on research. Academics don’t pay rent on their offices and labs, but they are used, say 40% or more of the time (nominally), for research. The research budget should collectively pay for the costs of the offices, lighting, internet, and other common costs that need to be allocated across uses. And if capital were the only thing that overhead paid for, no worries, it would be a small number. But there is a large process associated with applying for and administering grants, and many many university Vice Presidents, and Associate Deputy Vice Provosts, and so on whose job is attending meetings, who salary is in part covered by this overhead.

A new regime proposes eliminating most university overhead not only on future contracts, but on existing contracts. I am not a lawyer, but that sure seems unfair if not illegal. Cancelling and cutting promised revenue on contracts midstream has real effects on future science.

So why are there so many university staff administering grants beyond the people at the coalface actually mining for knowledge? In no small part is the federal governmental regulations about how grants should be administered. This is the “two-lawyer” problem, when a town has one-lawyer, that lawyer has no work, but when a town has two-lawyers, those lawyers have too much work, creating business for each other.

The Chesterton Fence approach would unwind the regulation, piece by piece with understanding of why it is there, so you could unwind the staffing, so you could unwind the overhead rate.

We must also consider the real purpose of the changes, which is not particularly to save money, but rather to punish the intellectual classes for opposing the regime.

Once upon a time, our institutions had clear missions. For instance:

• Journalism, is tasked with reporting the truth. It has also acquired a social justice mission of “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” Hence the right to a free press was drafted as the First Amendment to the US Constitution to protect this, as obviously without such protections, a government might try to crush dissent. Sadly, journalism increasingly prioritises speed, clicks, and confirmation bias over reliability, and even ‘papers of record’ are less trustworthy than they once were.

• Universities, on a much longer cycle, with a sauntering semesterly sequence of studies, once committed to seeking truth wherever it may lead, but now grapple with competing priorities like promoting social justice, even, if not always, at the expense of truth.

While I think institutions must evolve over time, they must also remember their purpose. A university that prioritizes advocacy over inquiry, or a news outlet that chases sensationalism over accuracy, loses its way. This tangential drift from core missions has damaged if not destroyed their long-term credibility and relevance. It has made them vulnerable to being crushed by a government that it disagrees with but that it has simultaneously a huge financial dependency on.

• The law's mission, like journalism’s pursuit of truth and academia’s search for knowledge, is justice—applying truth fairly and consistently. Ideally, it upholds rights and resolves disputes impartially. In practice, it balances competing interests and is shaped by power and politics. Like journalism and academia, it risks straying from its core mission when influenced by bias, ideology, or expediency.

It is more important to oppose things that are illegal than things that you oppose, because in the long run, if the laws don’t matter, the laws will no longer protect you.

On the other hand, if you are on the winning side, hope that you remain in the in-group

Frank Wilhoit: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

We should be far more careful dismantling institutions than we have been. Some aspects may very well benefit from dismantling, but if we fail to consider how it got there, we will more often than not be sorry once it is gone, and have to reinvent it later.

FIN

1. Effective Accelerationism (E/acc): Accelerationism, in broad terms, is a theory or attitude that endorses speeding up the processes of capitalism and technological development, either to bring about a post-capitalist society or to generate radical social change. Effective Accelerationism refers to a strategic and thoughtful approach to this acceleration, considering the long-term impacts and aiming for beneficial outcomes.