My wife recently bit into a stuffed olive and, instead of the expected pimento, found a small glass bead, presumably left behind during industrial pitting or stuffing. Fortunately, she suffered no injury. I returned the jar to the merchant and completed an incident report for the manufacturer.The form invited me to make a financial claim. For a fleeting moment, I entertained the possibility. But no one had been injured, and to suggest otherwise would have been dishonest. But a larger principle was at stake. I have no wish to live in a society where every mishap becomes grounds for litigation, every inconvenience a grievance, and every opportunity for personal gain an entitlement to be exercised.Canadians are fortunate to live in what, by historical standards, remains a remarkably high-trust society. Such a society depends not only on laws, regulations, and enforceable rights but also on habits of restraint, reciprocity, mutuality, civility, and ordinary decency. We accept that life occasionally deals us a poor hand, that not every grievance demands compensation, and that a certain amount of give and take is indispensable to living together.Above all, a high-trust society requires citizens who understand the difference between what they are legally entitled to claim and what they ought, in good conscience, to claim. Not every advantage available to us is one we should seize. This applies particularly to those among us who have been blessed by good fortune. Such people, it seems to me, have a corresponding obligation to set aside their immediate interests for those less favoured.Setting aside one’s interests and the goods and services to which one is legally entitled for the less fortunate does not strike me as an extravagant moral demand. It is merely the basic condition of civilized life..That is why it is disquieting to watch the already privileged take advantage of scarce public benefits meant to ease the burdens of those less fortunate. Why must those who already enjoy so much insist on claiming every advantage?G. K. Chesterton once observed, “It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money.” The distinction is worth remembering. There is nothing dishonourable about need. What offends our moral sensibilities is seeing those who have plenty ask for more. This tendency is especially unbecoming in our political class, whose members are generously compensated and who seldom miss an opportunity to remind the rest of us of our obligations to the common good.Consider the recent revelation that British Columbia Premier David Eby, whose annual salary exceeds $227,000, has been enjoying the province's much-coveted ten-dollar-a-day daycare program for one of his children.Mr. Eby has broken no rules. His child was already enrolled when the facility became part of the subsidized program, and he says his family donated the money saved. Nor is the program means-tested. Its defenders argue that universality is a virtue of public provision, not a defect.Yet these considerations do not resolve the larger question. Only a small minority of British Columbia families have access to these heavily subsidized spaces. For many parents, daycare remains an expensive necessity, and for others, a place is simply unavailable. .Against that background, the spectacle of a political leader, a well-paid premier, benefiting from a scarce public subsidy raises a question that appeals to rules and regulations alone cannot answer.The question is not whether Mr. Eby was entitled to the benefit. Plainly, he was. The question is whether a man in his position ought to have accepted it.This distinction between entitlement and obligation brings us to the heart of Christopher Lasch's The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. Writing three decades ago, Lasch described an emerging class of affluent, educated professionals increasingly detached from the ordinary lives, loyalties, and obligations of their fellow citizens. For Lasch, wealth was not the defining vice of this new elite. Every society has wealthy individuals. Instead, Lasch's analysis distinguished the new elite by a weakening sense of reciprocal obligation. They no longer felt beholden to their fellow citizens. For this elite, formal entitlement was enough to claim whatever advantages society offered, such as subsidized daycare for their children.Lasch understood something our political culture has largely forgotten. A democratic society cannot endure on rights and entitlements alone. It also requires a sense of mutual obligation and restraint, especially among those who have prospered most. The glass bead in my wife's olive was a minor inconvenience. The controversy surrounding Mr. Eby's daycare arrangements involves a substantial public benefit. Yet both raise the same moral question: Must we claim everything we are entitled to simply because we can?A society in which everyone insists upon the full measure of his entitlements may remain prosperous and law-abiding for a time. But laws alone cannot sustain the habits of restraint, decency, and reciprocity upon which any decent society depends. At day’s end, the question is not merely what we are entitled to claim, but, more tellingly, what we ought, in good conscience, to forgo.
