Here is how this goes. All this Epstein shit comes to a head under Trump 1. While there is popular support for investigations, the elites push it to the side while actively covering it up. Dems get in and treat it like a dirty sock they don't want to deal with because it's not serious enough. Four whole years go by with nothing but trials. Then Trump 2 happens. Predictably, they are going to destroy and cover up as much shit as possible. Trump's government is full of the same Floridian dipshits that were dealing with the case at the state level. Trump is involved.
The criminals are in charge of the evidence of course they're not going to release it. But now there also has to be a synthesis to resolve the contradiction. Thesis: Trump is a white-hat who will drain the swamp and arrest the elite pedophile ring. Antithesis: Trump and his closest subordinates are all part of the ring and are actively sabotaging the case. Synthesis: Trump is a good pedophile and the cost of arresting him is just too great. We need to move on.
Child abuse is now just a partisan talking point. We can't do anything about the problem, so we just do the best we can and understand that solving the problem costs too much political/economic capital. Just like with shooting kids or teaching them or feeding them.
What happens when we treat childhood poverty and violence as the cost of freedom and stability? It grows. It becomes worse. It affects more kids. What happens when we treat sexual violence the same way? Any guesses?
In 10-20 years are there going to be openly pedophile Republicans? In 2040 are they going to be pushing for a federal eradication of consent laws like they do with Roe or other stuff? Robber barons of the gilded age were probably pretty pedophilic. So we're just going to do that again? It's not enough that the rich get everything else they want, they need us to be okay with them stealing our children too.
Literally Omelas but worse and more stupid.
Reverse omelas, where we all suffer so that one person can actually have a good time.
I've always imagined that was the genesis for the basic idea behimd the story. Situations where a small elite class can live lavish lives over a massive underclass that is suffering horribly is too prevalent in reality to even be labelled a trope, it's gotta be a common situation for an author to think about. You can ask what a role reversal would look like, where the suffering class is the extremely tiny one, and then the most extreme possible conception of that role-reversal is the extremely tiny class is literally just one person.
Le Guin is actually making an even more subtle point. She first posits a utopia, and then dismisses it as unrealistic to the audience.
It's more of a meditation of the state of those who are unsatisfied with even utopia, for not being more than that, who undergo great uncertainty and suffering to progress history.
About those who in the lack of contradictions will seek them out because a society not in progression is intolerable.
I wasn't trying to say that has anything to do with the messages and philosophy woven into it, I just meant that I picture that as where the idea for the core plot mechanic came from before it was developed into a story with actual meaning. I imagine it as the kind of idea that could have sat around in her head for years before she had an idea to convey and made the connection that this setting was a fit for it.
It's definitely a philosophically deep story and my thought above had zero depth whatsoever, other than observing that "reverse omelas" has basically been reality for forever if you allow the tiny generalization from one single individual to a class of people still comparatively insignificant in number to the population as a whole.