This is an important point. People often confuse harm/âbenefit asymmetries with doing/âallowing asymmetries. Wenarâs criticism seems to rest on the latter, not the former. Note that if all indirect harms are counted within the constraint against causing harm, almost all actions would be prohibited. (And on any plausible restriction, e.g. to âdirect harmsâ, it would no longer be true that charities do harm. Wenarâs concerns involve very indirect effects. I think itâs very unlikely that thereâs any consistent and plausible way to count these as having disproportionate moral weight. To avoid paralysis, such unintended indirect effects just need to be weighed in aggregate, balancing harms done against harms prevented.)
This is an important point. People often confuse harm/âbenefit asymmetries with doing/âallowing asymmetries. Wenarâs criticism seems to rest on the latter, not the former. Note that if all indirect harms are counted within the constraint against causing harm, almost all actions would be prohibited. (And on any plausible restriction, e.g. to âdirect harmsâ, it would no longer be true that charities do harm. Wenarâs concerns involve very indirect effects. I think itâs very unlikely that thereâs any consistent and plausible way to count these as having disproportionate moral weight. To avoid paralysis, such unintended indirect effects just need to be weighed in aggregate, balancing harms done against harms prevented.)