[usrusr]

You write as if economic exploitation was somehow off the table. But economic exploitation isn't restricted to outright slavery, not at all.

Trade is disastrous when suddenly all local production has to compete with hyper efficient imports, but there's no export to really pay for imports. The damage to local production happens despite the imbalance. Repeatedly give a man a fish and sooner or later he will forget everything he ever knew about fishing.

[Jensson]

These people don't have an economy, so there is no economy to destroy, getting access to a market is far preferable to trying to survive in the wilds.

[usrusr]

Of course they have a market. Not a market of real estate bubbles and NFTs, that's for sure, but a market of skills and cooperation. They may not have much job specialisation (or they do, difficult to tell without contacting), but even without, different levels in experience and physical fitness will make that a market nonetheless.

And what level of experience we are looking at! Remember the 10000h rule? Imagine a group developing exactly one skill set since childhood. Trained by a chain of ancestors following the same path that would make the Bene Gesserit blush.

This would all collapse under contact. A few years of handouts and/or one-time trades and nothing of those abilities would be left. And those years would be far too short to find a place in the new (to them) market above that of beggars and thieves. They would have trouble even working as prostitutes not knowing the cultural codes around that.