I don't agree with the Epstein analogy; it's a different thing entirely. The fundamental point here is that ethics are expensive.

Living in very low development societies, you have very different choices than you do living in high development societies. I have friends in ES that are still in their twenties, that vividly remember times when: as a man, you could be shot for taking the wrong bus and ending up in the wrong suburb; as a parent, you might have to lock your daughter in the house permanently because you know she will be taken by the gangs for their "use" and you will never see her again. These are just a small section of the horrors of living in some parts of ES when the gangs had no pushback.

You could think of Bukele (and this applies to any government that actually functions) as another gang. But he has very broad support because his gang is promoting some kind of traditional/Christian morality in a largely Christian country. But given that context, the undoubted evil of some people (we of course will never know how many) being imprisoned unjustly, along with the more insidious evil of excessive power in the hands of one main, when balanced against the counterfactual of uncountable murders, thefts and rapes that *would* have happened without this, is easier to square off. 

 Agree with a lot of this. The Espstein analogy wasn’t supposed to be about the degree of problem, but about its *kind.* in other words, it was just meant to show that a “fair” system that inevitably requires human subjectivity, that is overrun with corruption, liars, cheating-as-a-rule, and outright malice, does not mean that its design ensures a fair or just outcome. 

The point you make about how bad the conditions were in the country help bring that point home. You can’t fix awful values and a society run by fear with a cleverly designed bureaucratic process. Ultimately it is still all executed and enforced by humans. 

Again this isn’t a claim of what action should be taken. Only that there are no clear options even though some may seem “sound” in principle, when we forget that the system isn’t mathematical like #Bitcoin, but inescapably human in its operation.