  In addition, if the state is in the business of attending to people’s needs, this raises the spectre of a bureaucratic, nanny state fostering one-sided dependence among citizens. The idea of distribution according to need, it is said, invokes or lends itself to a passive conception of agency. Those to whom goods are distributed will be seen as recipients of the state’s largesse. More worrisomely, the beneficiaries themselves may come to abandon the attempt to meet their own needs, as state policies promote a culture of dependence. This is destructive of people’s own sense of their agency and empowerment, and destructive of the very ethos a good society should be promoting.  We should instead be encouraging people to take responsibility for their own well-being.