The immoral mazes sequence has a lot about how people’s ability to signal that they are trustworthy and won’t defect is a key way to rise to power inside of an immoral maze. Immoral mazes do foster divergent moral ideas from the general population.
Yet the “conspiracy theorist” still has a lot of legwork to perform with this argument! It’s not just any moral transgression. The moral transgressions encouraged by an immoral maze are the ones that sacrifice morality in furthering the interests of the organization, so that they show the transgressor values the organization above all else. Raping children doesn’t typically show you are a trustworthy and card-carrying maze member—in fact quite the opposite. Unless your organization is some sort of ring dedicated to doing that, you will instead probably lose your job, because a compulsion to rape children is also a competing interest! At least according to Vicky Ward, Epstein’s plea agreement is apparently what kicked him out of the circles he was previously in - he was no longer someone the CIA or any of his former contacts wanted to work with, not insignificantly because they viewed him as a loose cannon and a liability in case he was ever prosecuted.
If you take the story (which might be true or not) of David Cameron fucking the head of a dead pig at a fraternity ritual, it makes good blackmail material in case Cameron defects on other elite members. Elite fraternities are powerful institutions. The 2004 presidential election was between two members of the same fraternity, Skull&Bones.
I really don’t think it’s possible to build any kind of criminal community based on the threat of mutual blackmail. If that were true it’d be easy to start a drug cartel. Every conspiracy includes the threat of mutual blackmail by default. The problem of organizing a successful conspiracy is mostly making sure those people you select to organize it are not ones who would ever would reveal secrets, and/or are correctly incentivized not to, and/or will never be in a position where it’s necessary.
Yet the “conspiracy theorist” still has a lot of legwork to perform with this argument! It’s not just any moral transgression. The moral transgressions encouraged by an immoral maze are the ones that sacrifice morality in furthering the interests of the organization, so that they show the transgressor values the organization above all else. Raping children doesn’t typically show you are a trustworthy and card-carrying maze member—in fact quite the opposite. Unless your organization is some sort of ring dedicated to doing that, you will instead probably lose your job, because a compulsion to rape children is also a competing interest! At least according to Vicky Ward, Epstein’s plea agreement is apparently what kicked him out of the circles he was previously in - he was no longer someone the CIA or any of his former contacts wanted to work with, not insignificantly because they viewed him as a loose cannon and a liability in case he was ever prosecuted.
I really don’t think it’s possible to build any kind of criminal community based on the threat of mutual blackmail. If that were true it’d be easy to start a drug cartel. Every conspiracy includes the threat of mutual blackmail by default. The problem of organizing a successful conspiracy is mostly making sure those people you select to organize it are not ones who would ever would reveal secrets, and/or are correctly incentivized not to, and/or will never be in a position where it’s necessary.