Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
Depends on the methods and everything, I'd probably do it for $500 million of new goods and services value created. I'd fully expect to end up in jail afterwards for life etc, but $400 million can secure my lineage for a dozen generations (the other $100 million I would use to fight child torture and end up saving hundred of children form being tortured to death), it's a tradeoff I'm willing to make. Of course I would also try to end the child's suffering as soon as possible.
I wouldn't even have moral pangs to be honest, from my point of view I just saved N-1 children from being tortured to death for some large N, and ending up in jail for the rest of my life is worth it for that.
Remove the jail condition and I'd knock $100 million off the price.
And if your next question is to ask about whether I or someone I love would like to be on the torture recieving end of the trade my answer would be an empathetic no, but that's why I'd take precautions to not end up in a situation like that, and if the person is basically being chosen at random the risk to me and my family personally will be on the order of 1 in many millions, and that's a level of risk we take on a daily basis when we travel to work each day, I'll gladly accept it. Doesn't mean I wouldn't fight to try and get out of it, but I'd expect the child to fight as well and that's fine in my book.
And equally the situation we were discussing up thread was one where both the girl and her parents consented to the act, which is not the case if the person about to be tortured to death was forced into it. If you could provide a cast iron guarantee that this person and their close family members all voluntarily and freely agreed to it (I don't know why they would, but maybe they've been offered a large sum of money too) then I'll knock another $50 million off the price.
Of course there are things I would not do for any amount of money, like e.g. shoot my own mother, but that's because of personal selfishness, because I like my own mother and she is worth a lot to me. I would still do a tradeoff analysis and find that the cost is so high that the tradeoff is not worth it anymore for whatever amount of money. It's not that doing the tradeoff analysis is wrong, it's just that the result of the tradeoff analysis is different in this case.
However once again I note that this situation is nothing like the Epstein sex case, in that situation everyone on all sides consented to it and there were third party moral busybodies who wanted to stop the transaction even though it had nothing to do with them. And in much the same way, if someone who fully consented was going to be tortured to death for a large amount of money being handed to all participants I would not be against it as an unrelated third party living in the same society.
If child sacrifice actually worked, and the benefits it got were good enough (e.g. rain to save the tribe's crops and prevent famine) I would also not be against it. I would not want to sacrifice my own children but you could well see people agreeing to it and gestating a child just to sacrifice it to Moloch if the rest of society compensated them enough for it, and that would be just and fine in my book.
(Note: In reality I would not take any money to murder a child with my own two hands either, but that is because of my religious convictions since I know what then penalty on the day of Judgement is for killing an innocent in Islam, the answer above would apply for a hypothetical atheist version of me and I believe that is the right frame to answer the question in since large portions of the people cooking up a stink over the results are atheists too. I can accept God-fearing humans to be extremely unhappy with Epstien offering money for sex and agree with their arguments for it being bad in a society living under a religous framework, but the west is not religious any more, it is atheist and can not hide under the mantle of religion when confronted with things that logically should be perfectly fine under its stated beliefs but in reality awaken a deep and ancient "ick" within us all).
Who determines whether "it's got anything to do with them"? If you say shooting your own mother has a tradeoff of infinity because of your personal selfishness, why can't others put a tradeoff of infinity on "allowing openly purchasing sex from children"?
For the same reason we don't allow people to put a tradeoff on infinity of "letting two gay people do what they want behind closed doors". Sure we let people believe that if they want, but we don't humour their beliefs for a single second and even make fun of people who believe such shit. We can do the exact same thing here.
Society as a whole decides whether something has got anything to do with them. As I mentioned society as a whole generally doesn't allow people to put a tradeoff of infinity on letting two gay people do whatever they want with each other in their bedroom or at least cries foul about other societies that do do this like Saudi Arabia.
The question then becomes what is it about "allowing openly purchasing sex from children" that does not apply to "gay sex between two consenting adults behind closed doors", and pretty much anything you can come up with there has an easy exception where society behaves the other way, thus displaying their hypocrisy and providing an argument for changing how society puts a tradeoff on things (which in the end is all we can do here merely by arguing online).
If you make a maturity argument then you need to realise that there are people who are more mature at 14 than others are at 40, I certainly could have consented to sex at 14, probably even at 10, and I know many other similar people. Now you could make a Schilling point argument about why we have an age of consent and the difficulty in determining who/who doesn't have the ability to consent but that just then implies (as another poster mentions in this thread) we should also forbid black adults from having sex, as most black adults are less intelligent and capable of making good decisions than many white teenagers for whom we forbid sex.
Other arguments for why we shouldn't allow 14 year olds to have sex have similar glaring loopholes where that same argument applies to different groups where we are absolutely fine with them having sex.
So you're going to use society's opinion as a reference for what is or isn't moral busybodying? I am confused then. In the West society certainly does consider it their business to prohibit children under 16 (18 in practice, higher than that depending on how old the other guy is and who you ask) having sex with adults.
In practice the attempts to equivocate such situations are sorely lacking. They fail to account for all aspects of child/adult disparity and/or make quite dubious reaches, such as "most black people are less capable than an unspecified percentage of white teenagers". I remain unconvinced.
What you might want to consider is what kind of relationships are currently deterred, in practice, by the age of consent laws as they are now. I do not believe these are the same kind of relationships as would be prevented by "consistent" consent laws that are supposed to match the rest of society to how we treat children.
(I'm also aware you probably think blacks /poors having unprotected sex is worse than children having sex, so no need to restate that unless you're going to deny it.)
No, I am just saying that in the real world society's opinion is exactly what counts for what is/isn't moral busibodying, and this is true regardless of whether the society is the USA or Saudi Arabia. I want to change society's opinion to be more in line with my opinion, no different to what pro-LGBT activists in Saudi Arabia want.
The onus is on the people who support the restriction to provide reasons for it, what reasons do they have for forbidding sexual intercourse between Jeffery Epstein and a 14 year old where the parents are in full agreement that do not also apply to other situations where those who call for this restriction would be fine with the intercourse? Note the age of consent in China is 14 so a well off Shangai family could easily decide to do this without legal issues, but I expect that westerners would still see a moral problem with this, no different to how Saudi Arabians see a moral problem with gay sex behind closed doors in the west.
Depends on the people having the intercourse as always. Most children are stupid so I absolutely would not support it for >99.5% of all children, in fact I consider it worse than blacks/poors having unprotected sex because many of these children are going to grow into perfectly good and decent adults and the early intercourse could hurt them and thereby all of society, while certified low productivity yield adults aren't going to be making big contributions anyways...
Such a "relationship" is morally/aesthetically disgusting, perhaps even more so with the parents' consent since it means her closest people are in on this. It was disgusting even when it was commonplace and unforbidden, see: all the tropes about young women forced to marry old rich ugly men. Those who point at the Big Money Number in response I consider a different moral species.
And a typical Saudi Arabian moralist may well say that a "relationship" between two men is morally/aesthetically disgusting too, and it's even more disgusting when the state openly supports signs and tokens of such depravity. It was also disgusting when it was commonplace and unforbidden back in Ancient Greece (and if you are of a religious bent, Sodom and Gomorrah). Those who point at the personal happiness of two men who love each other sign and use it to say that homosexuality is fine our Saudi Arabian commentator would consider a different moral species too.
What makes your argument valid but not that of the Saudi Arabian? If it is just that society is fine with one at the moment but not the other then I will mention that 100 years ago wasn't fine with homosexuality either and through a lot of effort this was changed until that's no longer the case and modern people don't think that gay people 100 years ago who were supressed by the state under its laws and moral of the time were doing anything bad either.
Unless you think the original gay activists etc. were doing something bad, why is this bad then?
I don't believe both people in a child-adult situation are going to be happy about it, even putting aside the other parts of the objection - the capability disparity, the coercion, the disgust with the adult's conduct, etc. I also don't believe in God or the primacy of maximally darwinist behaviour. In general, I want societies to exist to make individuals within happy rather than individuals existing to make societies happy, and I prefer mild discomfort that's shared over severe oppression that's offloaded onto a few.
In that case you should be supportive of society being discomforted by a child recieving $10 million for having sex with Epstein with their full understanding and the support of their parents. Remember the child is getting an extremely good deal here they are free to choose to take or refuse. It's not you will be forced into sex with Epstein and given $10 million, it's "you may choose to have sex with Epstein for $10 million". In financial markets we have options that give you the right to do something and thus they have value, If this option here were offered on the financial markets it would be priced in the millions.
This trade lifts the oppression of a life of drudgery from the child's shoulders for only a few minutes of suffering. Remember we're not talking about a long term relationship here, just a single act and there is no coercion happening here, the child only gets access to the money once they are 21 so their parents won't get to see a cent of it unless the now adult child decides to share it with them of thier own volition. The child may well not be happy about the sex act itself, but the $10 million on the other end brings enough utility to easily make it up.
Our Saudi Arabian moralist would be equally disgusted with the conduct of the two gays, but that's not a good reason to listen to him.
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