This is an important point. People often confuse harm/benefit asymmetries with doing/allowing asymmetries. Wenar’s 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 “direct harms”, it would no longer be true that charities do harm. Wenar’s concerns involve very indirect effects. I think it’s very unlikely that there’s 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/benefit asymmetries with doing/allowing asymmetries. Wenar’s 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 “direct harms”, it would no longer be true that charities do harm. Wenar’s concerns involve very indirect effects. I think it’s very unlikely that there’s 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.)