Should be whole social policy downgraded to crowd pleasing due to 'pragmatic consideration'?I've not seen anybody suggest that.
If you drop piece of meat here and there then at the end you will be out of meat and ever-hungry crowd (fostered to expect free meat only) will eat you anyway.Feeding zoo animals carries an expectation that a) the supply of food is inexhaustible and b) the animals are contained so they can't get at you. Of course that is a completely different proposition from large numbers of marginalized people who are legally entitled to roam your street and may be feeling like Robin Hood.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1