Yikes, that’s a lot of assumptions you made about me from one sentence. Personally I’ve never had to steal, I grew up middle class and had the opportunity to build up savings to become financially independent, just like you apparently.

I just learned empathy while growing up, so I can understand that some people didn’t have the same opportunities I had, and now have to resort to stealing.

That’s a easy statement to make with a full belly and no worries about where your next meal is going to come from.

Take a look at the Wikipedia page. It really is innocuous, it actually originated as a form of measurement like feet.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb

The top comment is using false etymology that was propagated in the 1970s.

I respect your intuition to drop problematic phrases but you may have been lead astray on “rule of thumb” by a very common rumour (Wikipedia calls it ‘modern folk etymology’) that that is where it originated.

In fact no law ever existed and it was more used in trades as thumbs were an easy mode of measurement available to anyone (similar to the use of feet to measure!)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb

The Wikipedia article even explains the “switch” rumour and provides some backstory and explanation to it.

So don’t feel weird using Rule of Thumb; it has more to do with carpentry than anything else.