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this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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Risa
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Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
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It's an interesting space version of non-interventionism. In the real world, intervention is a very complex issue to navigate. Particularly since most forms of national intervention have monetary drivers that make the choice much more about how it benefits the intervening country rather than the intervened.
I think DS9 is the only series to really address Statfleet's long term effects of intruding onto other cultures and forcing them to change.
I went to a panel on the problems with the Prime Directive at Chicon 8. There was a lawyer there who actually works with international aid organizations on how they intervene. His biggest problem with the Prime Directive is that it's too simple. They have stacks of rules about how exactly they go about this. There are places where they're not allowed to go because somebody fucked this up bad at some point in the past, and those people don't owe them access just because they promise to be better now.
IIRC, there is a throwaway line somewhere (from Data, I think) that says the Prime Directive is followed up by a hundred little rules defining out the specifics, but it's never treated that way.
Naomi Wildman says it has 47 sub-orders in "Infinite Regress".
I've also seen interesting arguments on wether the prime directive is even moral at all, after all if space fairing civilisations are encountering you then they're probably going to imminently scoop up all the good interstellar real estate in your viscinity, not enlightening a civilisation is dooming them to be stuck with whatever resources are left when every other civilisation nearby has taken what it wants. (Lets be realistic there's no way every single group is going to abide by a treaty that grants primitive civilisations pre-emptive territory bubbles)