>>Allow me to rephrase: You seem to believe in the collective over the individual. I put the individual first.

Can we agree that the essence of civilization is specialization?

You are a specialist. You can be a specialist because somebody else grows your food and defends your homestead so you can focus on your speciality. If it were every man for himself, there would be no computers and you'd be an expert with a cudgel, not with a mouse.

You may claim that those who grow your food are paid, so it's still individual endeavor acting in self interest. This is true but it's not an "either or" proposition because now you are relying on money. Money needs organization and credibility. It also needs bureaucrats to manage things. The bureaucrats want to eat too, so now there is a funding issue. If this is refused on principle then the bureaucrats will turn back into highway robbers and the baker will be too busy defending his homsetead to make bread for you and once again there are no computers and now you spend your days picking snails off the cabbages and scraping oils for candles and watching the horizon for pillagers.

Need I go on? Civilization relies on "the collective" as you call it, presumably with derogatory intent. Unless people join together with common purpose and with agreed rules, you're back in the stone age.

If I had to state a single position, I would paraphrase Churchill to observe that "capitalism is the worst system except for all the others that have been tried." Yes we need to promote and reward individual endeavor... without dooming the less gifted and without the advantaged few pulling up the ladder after themselves to lock in their advantage. Once that starts, the steady drumbeat of revolution becomes audible. If capitalism heads in that direction then we capitalists need to act. In 2012 it's the middle classes that need to act- and not for the first time if you check your US history. Forget socialist namby pamby and consider it a matter purely of self-interest if it helps.