The reason collectivism is the MO everywhere is because the collective steamrolls the individual every time. Society is basically an ossification of this relationship, so that TPTB don't have to run every retard who thinks he's stronger than whatever collective he inhabits over with a tank to prove it to him. I think that people who think that the individual is stronger must not have ever had to actually do anything. Whatever you choose to do to support yourself as an island unto yourself would fail in a vacuum. Just living off the grid without the rest of society would require you to be an architect, blacksmith, farmer, electrician (or to properly cut & store firewood, know how to make a spring/root cellar and preserve crops, etc), carpenter, etc. And saying 'I'd trade with other people' is a cop-out - society exists in a large part to create and enforce the rules of a market and defend that order against external threats, so the claim devolves into 'I'll build a different, better kind of collective'.