A side note
... [A]ny useful social system has to take people as they are, not as one wishes them to be.
Precisely the philosophy of John Adams, in opposition to Thomas Jefferson's pure democratic idealism -- a stand taken in absentia, as it happens, through the unpredictable vagaries of the trans-Atlantic post.
Thankfully, he prevailed, and we have a Federal democratic republic.
I'll also say, so as not to be misunderstood: "Taking people as they are" in a social system does not preclude -- nor should it -- encouraging them, and assisting where needed, to become as they wish to be.