This reliance on the collective is very interesting; especially considering the United States is built upon  the concept of individual freedom. So, I suggest you compare the collective societies, where the individual has his freedom secondary to the state. In these populations, you don’t have the same level of massive collective intelligence as in Capitalist societies. Instead, these societies tend to have a population which share a single monotonous intelligence. It seems paradoxical to have such a collective strength emerge out of a multitude of distinct autonomous units and a lack of such strength when these units are more uniform in their actions. But is it precisely this power of individual freedom and expression which leads to the formation of reliance on collective interactions.