Dear Editor:
Every day we are deluged with pleas for public assistance.
Five hundred years ago, Machiavelli wrote about the principle of availability. Recently Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the United States Treasury Board, wrote about the theory of presumed entitlement.
Let me expound on these two principles.
Machiavelli succinctly stated that animals and people will flock to the locale of availability for whatever – food, money, sex, accommodation and entertainment.
The easier the acquisition of the aforementioned, the greater the number of attractants.
Now, combine this with the modern day assumption that residents are entitled to just about anything: free education, free prescriptions, free health care and free housing (with food banks).
The plight of the truly homeless and those who want everything for free has been self-inflicted by the attitude of the politicians in the major cities. In their lust to get re-elected, principals in all levels of government are succumbing to arbitrary measures and subsidizing the lives of able people at the immeasurable cost to the working Canadian.
Until all levels of government lessen or abolish the gratuities and their easy availability, these masses will, by human nature, take the easy route.
As long as political institutions provide a free ride, the working classes will continue to pay.
The free ride must end.
Jim McClure,
Crieff