Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Watch out for Chesterton’s fences

Intellectuals are too eager to reinvent things in pursuit of conceptual neatness. So are Silicon Valley types

issue 10 September 2016

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’

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