>the US Treasury Department should impose fines on parents who want to pay the ransom for their kidnapped children

Some countries does actually criminalize paying ransom for kidnapped children. The logic being that if society make it harder to pay ransoms (both via criminalization and strong currency controls at the bank), then less kidnappers will get paid, which leads to less kidnapped children (hopefully).

The vast majority of people in this thread probably disagree with such a law. I certainly do. But on the other hand I realize that if I had been born in one of these countries and lived there my whole life, I would probably be a fervent defender of such a law.