I lost track of this thread in the changeover:

ISF: Looking at the different posts I think what you are struggling with is the application of the ideal to the reality of the situation. Values such as individualism, choice, personal responsibility, personal freedom etc. are good values for an individual and for a society to strive to achieve. However, the reality of applying these values to scale is where you start to have problems. These values can be applied very easily to say, rural Kansas, because in a town of 6,000 people, with vast stretches of land between each house and the need for families to work together and carry multiple hats (businessman, firefighter, caretaker), you need the value of individualism and personal responsibility to thrive in daily life more than you need governmental organization. However, if you scale up to any major metropolitan area, these values change. Populations are more dense, the cost of living is higher and you have to earn more money and specialize in order to maintain or increase your standard of living. The scale of required actions by the populace is on a greater scale, so collective actions must be taken (i.e., republics or representative bodies). Also, you do not know the people you interract with everyday so group identification becomes more important (ethnic, socioeconomic). It is not that invidualism or personal responsibility are not applicable, but they are not as important as a collectively structured society or learning how to adapt and navigate through people and collective groups. To use a business analogy, with less people in a business, the business can make decisions faster with more individual input. But with more people, the agency cost is greater and individual input is diminished to the benefit of the collective goal.