Personal interest should be subservient to public interest

My own post shall flesh out my own position so that we can get to the argumentative bloodshed (the crowd loves a lot of arguments). I contend the above point, and shall also bear a shared burden of proof by stating that the collective (or group) interest should not interfere with individual interest. This follows from the self-ownership of all human individuals. Such a philosophy promotes more for everybody while minimizing conflict and providing the surpluses of material necessities to spend time on more spiritual or aesthetic activities, meaning that a society that protects the individual from the collective will help in ensuring (as much as possible in an uncertain world) the minimum necessities of life as well as allowing one to "prosper physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. " Both Pro and I want the same ends, and we now have shared BoP (Pro in making the resolution, myself in taking the exact opposite stance) in explaining how one path is the better option. Overall, I have two reasons for taking the opposite stance; the logical implication of self-ownership, and for reasons of utility. First, the logic of self-ownership; for one to "own the self," they must be able to claim in some manner that they are an independent entity (simply moving or grunting can accomplish this), they must have a definite boundary (generally something we can agree on, with additional breathing space dependent on culture and locality), and they must exhibit self-control in that they control their actions, not an outside force. This is true of all "animals" as we know them so far. Animals, requiring the consumption of other living organisms to survive, need to claim and control a portion of an organism within a definite boundary. They have "improved" upon the original resource by making it useful to their species (particularly itself). This is little different from the notion of homesteading. Many animals establish varying degrees (depending on species) of preference for close or far distance between members (bees will live in a colony together, bears don"t tend to like company). These animals establish territories from which they harvest their required food. Thus, from self-ownership and immediate hunting-gathering, we see that individual organisms must be allowed a type of territorial claim in order to survive. Being that our care is homo sapiens, that implies that individual humans must, as a prerequisite for survival as self-owners, be allowed to have territorial, or property, rights not under the control of other group members. Individuals may enter contracts to share property, but it is still reliant on themselves as self-owners to first agree to such a contract and keep it. Second, utility; the protestant pilgrims that landed on Plymouth Rock attempted collective food growing before. It resulted in disaster for the colony. However, after instituting private property rights, the diminished pilgrim population produced more food than they did with more pilgrims under a collective system. [1] That a large portion of the bounty was eventually shared communally was still the actions of self-owners essentially "buying" esteem in the community with their generosity, as well as perhaps friendship with their other pilgrim neighbors. As societies get larger, the biological limit to human relations does not increase [2], so the number of "friendly neighbors" for which one will wish to share and be in great graces with will diminish. In larger societies, divisions of labor and investments driven by a price system is the only rational means humanity has yet to come up with that addresses the societal needs in mass as well as all the individual utility scales in existence, and the price system relies on private property rights and self-ownership to work properly. Essentially, Pro and myself have shared BoP, I contend that individual interests along the lines of self-ownership and private property rights from homesteading are far more important than collective, or group, interests based on the logical implications of self-ownership and the social utility to more and more individuals that such a focus gains. I turn this debate back to Pro. Sources [1]. http://www.jeffersonreview.com... [2]. http://www.businessweek.com...