The moment you step through the gate of The Grand Canyon Deer Farm you’re inundated by does and their fawns hoping for a treat. When they realize you didn’t pay $5 for a souvenir cup containing 2¢ worth of corn, they turn away and have nothing more to do with you.

However, you can snicker when the deer greet the next suckers visitors who show up holding corn.

At Old McDonald’s Petting Farm just outside of Mount Rushmore, the goats congregate around the machine that dispenses feed and look at you with hungry, soulful eyes. Even the pot-bellied pigs rouse from their midday naps, lumbering over to the food chute on the chance that an altruistic tourist might be packing apples.

To see a stark example of the major difference between captive animals and wild ones, drive a few dozen miles west to Wyoming. Offer some grain to a wild pronghorn. Not only will it reject your gift, it’ll turn tail and show you why it’s the fastest mammal in the Americas.

Captive animals equate people with food. They forget to instinctively forage for food and fear predators, making it impossible for them to survive in the wild for very long.

The same thing goes for humans. Like Sharon Jasper of New Orleans, who complained that the taxpayer-funded Section 8 apartment she moved into after Hurricane Katrina is a “slum.” Instead of thanking those taxpayers for saving her from sleeping in the park, she complains that she still has to pay her utilities and security deposit.

Jasper’s newly renovated apartment features wood floors. And that big TV must cost as much as a year of utility bills.

How about the Harper family from Georgia? They were chosen from thousands of applicants to appear on the ABC show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. They received a new $450,000 home (their old house was razed) – plus a scholarship fund for their kids and a home maintenance fund, totaling $250,000. They also got an all-expenses-paid week in Disneyland while other people built their house.

Now they’re getting a foreclosure notice from the bank that gave them a $450,000 line of credit without asking them what they were going to use the money for or how they planned to repay it. Darn that ABC, why didn’t they tell us we’d have to pay back any money we might borrow?*

Evelyn Adams won the New Jersey lottery in consecutive years and managed to squander $5.4 million. She donated much of the money to slot machines in Atlantic City, and actually said “I wish I had the chance to do it all over again.”

Apparently her financial strategy is to win the lottery a third time.

These are the deer (or goats, or pigs) we create when we give people what we think they need instead of expecting them to work for what they want.

People are not forged by their circumstances so much as they are by their choices. If circumstances dictates destiny, there would never be a Sheldon Adelson, J.K. Rowling, Chris Gardner nor Oprah Winfrey, all of whom rose from modest beginnings. And all of whom chose to change their circumstances and accept the sacrifices that go along with that choice.

Self-sufficient people don’t have the luxury of being victims. They take responsibility for their actions, choices and life – and get freedom in return.

*ABC did arrange for the Harpers to meet with a financial planner.