"Incidentally, anyone who uses the word "society" in a phrase to make it sound like it is an entity in itself should set off alarm bells in your brain.*"

>Thank you for a good title. It is precisely this degradation of language that I find objectionable. For the sake of clarity, I will attempt to address some of your points, but would appreciate in your answers that you cease from trying to restrict thought by the newspeak technique of using a lable to classify what is being said by casting a perjoritive framework around words. Words in themselves are generally value neutral and you needn't fear them so.

"Who exactly is "society?" Apparently it doesn't include those people who, through their own struggles and efforts, have managed to provide their own health and welfare. "

>You is old chum! Let me start with the self-evident. We are more than one. We are more than a family, or even several families. We are tens of millions. We exist, therefore, in societies. The word should hold no threat to you--you need not fear it.

>The only question that should be on the table is what form a society will take? The form of any society turns upon where legitimacy lies. There are four options for this: 1) a god, 2) a king, 3) groups, or 4) the individual citizenry acting as a whole.

>Inasmuch as our society has opted for choice 4, the individual can't replace government. In a democracy the individual is the government.

"There is no such being as "society." In a free country, there are individuals, and groups of individuals who band together voluntarily for mutual benefit. When you hear someone talking about you sacrificing something for "society," you are hearing a looter."

>Try to think beyond the box of that little Russian lady you so adore. If individuals do not exercise their powers conferred by their legitimacy, others will do so---such as coalitions of interest groups.
I fear you have become so obsessed by hating government that you forget it is your government and it is the only public force available to you.

>Our society-(sorry but I like that word for its inclusive quality) will succeed or fail based on the investments that it makes. Good physical infrastructure (roads, airports, water systems, sewage, internet, etc.) and good social infrastructure (public safety, educational opportunities, research and development) are necessatry if economic progress is to occur.

>Without social organization and participation everyone sadly has an incentive to be a free rider--you aren't alone Tom. Carried to a logical extreme this is individually rational, but the net result is a collective irrationality.

>We owe it to ourselves and our posterity to give a better society to our children and we have a government form that allows this, if we can transend our petty, stingy, cheap grimeyness and move down to Whoville, Mr. Grinch.