system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[star trek] how does the federation justify the prime directive? How does the ability to develop a warp drive mean that a species is worthy of survival?
gpt
It does not have anything to do with any archaic idea of worthiness, if you have a warp drive there is no chance that your race could ever really be wiped out. you can travel so fast that you can colonize other stars and even other galaxies with enough effort. In most cases once the ability to make a warp drive is possible the level of production is such that it can be done by a small group of people so individual groups could make their own, very few methods of extermination would allow you to kill every member of a space fairing race fast enough to keep them from evading you.

tldr: it isn't worthiness it is the fact that once they have warp drives you are stuck with them.