That depends on your definition of society. If you mean a civil order with proprietarian standards and division of labor, then you are correct. But if you refer to “society” as a fictional entity with responsibilities and rights beyond that of the individual, you believe in something that is not there.
Then you have never actually seen collectivism. As a matter of fact, only individuals exist. To pretend otherwise is to operate on a false premise. And when you build governments on that premise, you get almost 100 million people dead as men like Stalin and Mao try their damnedest to craft a “society” which denies the actual, objective truth of human existence. Whereas if you accept objective truth and reject the false premise of collective existence, you can then develop rational ethics that work in harmony with man’s nature, rather than non-ethical engines of society which would require the destruction of human nature to work at all.
The key word there is individuals. Only individuals act. Only individuals think. Only individuals make choices, therefore only individuals can possibly be regarded as responsible. It doesn’t matter if there’s one or a dozen of them, or 30 million of them calling themselves a “government”. It is still individuals choosing to act, always in a self-interested manner, and always individually responsible for their choices whether they or anyone else recognizes that fact.
No they are certainly not. Responsibility follows commission. You may feel a moral obligation to do certain things which had nothing to do with a commission on your part, but as a matter of rational fact you are not responsible for them.
Why do you assume that a person is responsible for a condition that did not follow any action of their own? Is it the very existence of want that creates responsibility? That cannot be true, or you are responsible for the health of every infant that dies of malnourishment, everywhere at any time. In that case, you are a murderer, because right now there is a child, somewhere in this world, dying of hunger and you, selfish little bastard, are doing NOTHING to help it.
Obviously, that’s absurd.
So does responsibility happen when you encounter the need? That can’t be true either, or I could walk into the same room where you are and make you responsible to provide me with insulin, which I definately need and am currently unable to obtain.
The only logical way to look at it is that everyone is responsible for themselves. That, by definition, precludes the assumption of any interpersonal responsibility.
And that, in fact, is the logical compliment of the negative liberty principle - everyone has the right to full enjoyment and control of themselves and their property, which by definition means that nobody has the right to any enjoyment or control of anyone else or their property.
Hence all interpersonal responsibility occurs either as a result of voluntary agreement or when one individual, through commission, invades the person or property of another. The first extends only so far as the agreement allows, the second exists only to the extent of the prior violation.
