> with the same logic the US Treasury Department should impose fines on parents who want to pay the ransom for their kidnapped children, because obviously (payi

> with the same logic the US Treasury Department should impose fines on parents who want to pay the ransom for their kidnapped children, because obviously (paying the ransom) benefits and promotes the illicit objectives of the kidnappers This is actually sound logic. If 90% of parents pay ransom, kidnappers will kidnap a hundred kids a year. 90 will come home whole, 10 will have their fingers, toes, eyeballs, and various other body parts mailed home one per week in plastic baggies, or whatever unpleasant fate awaits kidnap victims who can't come up with their ransom. Then what happens if we make ransom illegal, and we have the police watching the bank accounts of kidnapped kids' families like hawks so usually even if parents try to flout the law, the police can successfully freeze a transfer before the funds get to the kidnappers? In that case kidnappers will kidnap three or four kids, most likely none of the parents will pay. Those kids will be horribly murdered, but then the kidnappers will decide it's not profitable and give up. Horrible if you're the parent of one of the 3 kids, especially if you end up in jail for trying to save your child's life. But from a standpoint of social policy, having 3 kids get horribly murdered and then no more is a way, way better outcome for society as a whole than having 10 kids a year get horribly murdered, plus 90 kids a year get kidnapped and their parents have to pay ransom. The problem is the 3 kids that actually get murdered have names and faces and sad / angry / incarcerated parents. The 7 kids a year who were saved from coming home in baggies, and the 90 kids a year who were saved from being kidnapped but ransomed, and the 90 sets of parents who weren't impoverished paying a giant ransom when their kids were kidnapped? They're statistical and unknowable. I suppose it's a variant of the trolley problem: Is it ethical to save a specific person whose name and face you know, if by doing so you're condemning to death many others, whose identities are currently completely unknown since they will be randomly chosen at a future date? You could also make an argument in the other direction from individual rights. Society shouldn't sanction a person who's trying to save a family member being directly threatened with death, even if their actions indirectly cause the deaths of many others. The right to protect your family is important and should be protected. I guess it depends on whether you have a utilitarian perspective (3 dead kids is better than 10 dead kids full stop) or a rights-based perspective (you always have a right to protect the life of a threatened family member full stop.)