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Comment by ahmeneeroe-v2 | Hacker News Reader

>It's only when you replace a set of rules with a different set of rules to serve the same purpose that you've moved the fence.

Fence #1: the existing set of rules defining a more limited US Federal Government and a more limited USCG and a more limited DHS

Fence #2: removed limits on Feds, expanded those organizations, placed limits on [insert economic activity]

Whatever your opinion on the wisdom/value of this, this move by the DHS is an attempt to replace Fence #2 with the original Fence #1.

Put in your terminology, they are replacing a set of rules (expansive gov) with a different set of rules (limited gov).

Put in my terminology, this is correcting the original violation of Chesterton's Fence.

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The issue is that fence 2 doesn't serve the same purpose as fence 1.

Fence 1 is that we have the NCFSAC that serves to ensure the safety of commercial fishing.

Fence 2 is no fence because we don't want to limit economic activity.

That's by definition removing the fence, not moving it.

Safety policy is written in blood. By getting rid of the committee that writes that policy you aren't moving the fence, you are just getting rid of it and letting the blood that chesterton's fence once stopped to flow again.

Now do before 2018 when the NCFSAC didn't exist...

It's simply returning to the status quo of 6 years ago.

The committee should be producing results.

We have data of incidents: https://uscgboating.org/statistics/accident_statistics.php

There's virtually no change since 2018 (various incidents go up and down but stay similar from 2018-2023).

> We have data of incidents

Those are recreational boating accidents. They are completely unrelated to the discussion at hand (which is commercial fishing accidents).

> Now do before 2018 when the NCFSAC didn't exist...

> It's simply returning to the status quo of 6 years ago.

It's not though. Before it was called the NCFSAC, it was the Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Safety Advisory Committee (CFIVSAC). That committee existed back to 2010 at least.

If you are interested in what they actually do, you probably want to go here: https://www.dco.uscg.mil/NCFSAC/

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And I'm not sure exactly what argument you are trying to make. It's not Chesterton's fence to do something new. It is Chesterton's fence to get rid of something without planning for something to replace it's role. It's not a complicated concept. Chesterton's fence is about removing something without understanding why it was there and planning properly for after it's gone.

You're letting your personal opinion color your ability to think through this logically.

"Limiting government" ≠ "no fence". It is a fence on government regulation. A "meta-regulation" if you will.

The point of Chesterton's fence is that the fence was created for a specific reason and then was removed without addressing that. Replacing that fence with something built for an entirely unrelated purpose isn't replacing that fence. The closest equivalent would be replacing an electric fence with a small stone retaining wall.

They do different things. The electric fence is for keeping animals in/out and the retaining wall is for keeping soil from moving. Sure you may add the retaining wall but you've still removed the electric fence so the foxes can now get into your chicken coops or your cows are running free. That's chesterton's fence. Even if well meaning, making a change that fails to replicate/fulfil the original purpose of the original fence causes the issues to return.

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