To be fair, that's truer in politics than, say, physics.

Well, you want larger margins of error when setting up a near-singleton than while using it, because if you set it up correctly then it'll hopefully catch your errors when attempting to use it. Case in point: FAI.

EDIT: If someone is downvoting this whole discussion, could they comment with the issue? Because I really have no idea why so I can't adjust my behaviour.