A standing prohibition on intervening in a developing society, on the grounds that the intervener cannot foresee the consequences.
Star Trek's standing rule from 1966. It is genuinely invoked in development-aid and anthropological ethics debates, and its objection is the same in both: non-intervention is itself a choice with consequences.
In practice
- An aid agency declines to install a borehole pump because it cannot foresee what removing the daily walk for water will do to the arrangements built around it.
- The village goes on drawing from the river, which is the outcome the agency chose by declining, and the agency does not record it as a decision.
- Standing
- Genuinely invoked in development-aid and anthropological ethics debates.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Rules that restrain power, and advice on using it