In modern society where most people live in cities and where both needs and wishes are absolved through the same remote agency - money - the distinction between wishes and needs has altogether vanished.

Don't reward bad behavior. It is one of the first rules of parenting. During the financial cataclysm of 2008 we said it differently. When we bailed out banks that had created their own misfortune we called it a 'moral hazard ' because the bailout absolved the bank's bad acts and created an incentive for it to make the same bad loans again.

Here's the teaching point if you're teaching kids about intelligence and policy: Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions and it doesn't absolve them of having curiosity about the consequences of their actions.

Of course Third World leaders love you. By ascribing third world ills to First World sins you absolve them of blame for their countries' failure to advance.

White shall not neutralize the black nor good compensate bad in man absolve him so: life's business being just the terrible choice.