"If it be taught that all who are born have a right to support on the land [public], whatever be their number, and that there is no occasion to exercise any prudence in the affair of marriage so as to check this number, the temptations, according to all the known principles of human nature, will inevitably be yielded to, and more and more will gradually become dependent on parish assistance."
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
Yes, that Thomas Malthus, the one who predicted the demise of mankind as a species because population growth would outstrip man's ability to provide enough food to feed it.
What he didn't figure into the equation, obviously, was man's ability to advance technologically to increase food production geometrically as population did the same.
What brings about such technological advancement?
PEOPLE PRODUCE MORE, AND ADVANCE MORE, AND CREATE MORE, AND BECOME MORE WHEN THEY ARE ALLOWED TO ACT FOR THEMSELVES AND NOT BE ACTED UPON. BECAUSE OF DEPENDENCY, THOSE NOT SO ALLOWED, OR IN FACT CONTROLLED, WILL NEVER, EVER, EVER REACH THEIR TRUE POTENTIAL.
And, as Malthus suggests, when they are "taught" to depend on something outside themselves, which he naively thought would be "parish assistance," they will "inevitably" yield to human nature, and become MORE dependent.
I bet he did not imagine that the GUBMENT would replace parish assistance as the provider for those so dependent!
So, as we watch
- inter-generational welfare grow, and
- more and more people who think that food is best bought with a stamp, and
- dependent people who think that the role of "gubment" is to provide for their WANTS, and
- vacuous people living in filth and slop to demand more and more "a right to support on the land," and extolled for doing so, and
- the creation of more economic liabilities as opposed to economic assets, receiving taxes and not paying them -
do you not worry, as I, that we are engendering a generation who thinks that such dependency and entitlement is normal?
Normal...? Things I grew up being taught were DEVIANT my young daughter thinks are normal. Imagine what is yet to come!
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