That's not the Chesterton's fence at all.
In plain words, the Chesterton's fence says that if you want to remove something because you don't understand why it's there, you should first find out why is it there.
That, as you notice, has nothing to do with "worked hard" or "took a long time".
But if I'm not mistaken the original argument around Chesterton's fence is that somebody had gone through great efforts to put a fence somewhere, and presumably would not have wasted that time if it would be useless anyway.
My response was to this statement—specifically, toward the assumption that, since someone has gone through great efforts to put a fence somewhere, it's ok to assume said fence isn't useless. I'm not seeing where my comment is inconsistent with what it's responding to (that is, I'm seeing "gone through great efforts" as synon...
Chesterton's meta-fence: "in our current system (democratic market economies with large governments) the common practice of taking down Chesterton fences is a process which seems well established and has a decent track record, and should not be unduly interfered with (unless you fully understand it)".