Does more pixels = more cropping?

Branches against the rockface

This is a heavily cropped image, about 1/2 of the original size.  When you make such huge directional change (from the original intention when taking the picture), you'll need some more pixels to play around with.  Of course we're talking about good pixels here. And I believe this is when the latest crop of 24 megapixel cameras come into value.  In regular picture taking, especially for those grown up with the 35mm film era, we all learn how to make best use of the film, and cropping were kept to a minimum -- minor trim here, straightening a bit there.  We learned to make sure the final image is almost the done deal.  This is particularly true when shooting transparencies.  We received the processed slides mounted, usually glued in cardboard mounts.  There was nothing much we can do about them, unless we really thought that we got a winner and started doing duplicates and cropping and other tweaks. In the early days of digital when we were dealing with 6M files, we were particularly careful in making use of every pixel. When we are given the luxury of the inflated megapixel counts, wewill start to be careless, and when the latitude of the pixels are getting better, we are getting even less careful with exposures..... When I was switching from 6M to 12M, I was ecstatic but still very conservative with my compositions.  When I switched from 12M to 24M, I was loosen up big time with my use of the extra property (I also switched from APS-C to full frame).  The attitude was shoot-first-crop-later.  This is the wrong approach, because supposedly you should be composing the picture while you were shooting -- the choice of lens, the shooting distance (perspective) and the compositional elements to go into the picture...... they all should be considered before pressing the shutter.....