I dont like how the child is just there as a superstition. If you want to look at this in a third world oppression kind of way, the luxuries and commodities of the first world are a direct artifact of the oppression of the third world. Reading this i just thought why dont they just liberate the kid, he's just there for no reason, while liberating the masses would mean that the first world/the western bourgeoisie would be less luxurious and happy.

Plus as a utilitarian i dont see this system as bad, if a million people can live as happily as ever at the cost of one sacrifice. Which is absolutely not rappresentative of any status quo where that happiness is fabbricated and the suffering are more numerous by far than those profitting. Maybe we all have different tollerances of how much misery there can be for some happiness in the rest of us, and this falls in my range of tollerance. For a society with no violence, rape, sadness or worry i'd absolutely sacrifice a child.

I know im probably reading this way wrong (im not a good reader) and i dont want to shit on LeGuin but this reads like a conservative/fascist thing against liberals, who dont accept a necessary evil and therefore perform some sort of self harm or hermitism, like protesting or boycotting some product.