"I'd be happy to explain some other time but it's actually a bit tangential to the point I'm making here. It was happening, and it stopped the instant we had access to planets because it was no longer necessary, and if someone had given us warp forty years ago it would have stopped forty years ago, and it seems very strange to say that that would have been a tragedy because of lost cultural development."

"Of course that isn't what I mean."

"Amenta getting warp sooner would not have been a tragedy?"

"The problem with euthanizing babies is not specifically that you can't put the babies on some other planet."

"The policies that were in place for the sake of population control were horribly inhumane and yet better than not having strict population controls. Population controls were necessitated by not having warp."

"Most Federation planets have grown past terrible historical periods too. In most cases they learn a lot and have much more functional governance and social structures as a result of learning from these times."

"Our people are not lessons in governance and it is appalling that they were left to suffer and die so we could learn some."

Ambassador K'riohgann(v)or holds up his hands. "We hadn't even surveyed this sector, no decisions about Amenta in particular were made."

"It's very hard for us not to think of the policy in those terms. If there were evidence that societies given warp early went to war with other alien societies more..."

"Obviously the sample T'Mir visited isn't random - in particular, she chose societies that were already near the discovery."

"Yes, of course."

"Societies that are pre-warp are also usually pre-planetary unification, which is a strong stabilizing factor - things the entire population can get behind are less likely to seem extreme to the neighbors."

"I think we could abide by criteria for contact which hewed closely to 'reducing the risk of elevating new destabilizing powers'."

"Even if you find a species very interested in expansion that would be likely to seek it by violent means?"

"That doesn't sound like a species who should have warp. Perhaps we could terraform a few planets for them within their own star system in case they mature with more space, like Amentans did."

"How do you plan to assess possible violence?"

"Internal wars seem like a decent proxy, that and attitudes in media towards potential aliens."

He sighs.

"You could push for more conservativism on those grounds, just not on the grounds that suffering is culturally enhancing."

"Those aren't the grounds. No one is hoping to see people suffer. But there are times in my own planet's history where it would have been a terrible mistake to introduce us to the rest of the quadrant. I think every species has some such times. And any process of evaluation will make costly mistakes. Warp is when there is no longer any decision to be made."

"Well, no one will stop any concerned citizens of the Federation from getting a blog and trying to make the case to the public."

Sigh.

"I could get you extradition conditional on something bad happening - people'd understand T'Mir being liable for the societies she uplifted launching wars of conquest or something..."

"That might be placating. It's just that she already made a gamble it's illegal to make, not just to lose."

"It seems like a bit of a gamble that no one will reach warp angry that they were denied aid for so long, or desperately expansionist in a way they wouldn't have been if they'd learned sooner."