Good friend of mine put it this way: You take the King's shilling, you do the King's service. The trick, then, is for those who don't want to work for the King to figure out how to deal with each other. I believe in a day's work for a day's pay - drives me crazy to see people sitting on their glutes getting paid for nothing. Way up in these comments I saw a phrase or two that struck a chord - I help those in need when I choose to - I may not always have 'extra' money laying around (things can be tight at times for those who aren't exactly poor also), I may not think one person is as deserving of assistance as another (lost job during a draw-down vs. crack addict), and that is how societies take care of themselves. I'd like to see a personality study of the EU and U.S. politicians today with some analysis of how many of them truly have the job because of some higher sense of providing for the greater good. Too many people seem to think they are 'owed' something because they are poor, an ethnic minority, etc. Just a century ago people would wait to get married, have kids, buy a house because they couldn't AFFORD it. Self-policing social responsibility. Now take the case of the young buck who seems to think it's okay to kick out some pups every few years, with different women, tell them to live in govt housing while he quits his job and walks away (drawing unemployment INSURANCE that he'll likely never pay back or pay taxes on) and eventually break the law enough times to get a free ride (3 squares and a bunk) for the rest of his life - in prison. Oh, how RESPONSIBLE we've all become! Or the young women who accept their role in that equation as well! "They can all be reformed!" Everyone deserves an equal chance - that's what the U.S. Constitution line "all men are created equal" means to me - then how come so many seem to get 2,3,4 chances and never get removed from the gene pool? Crime rates were pretty low back in the days of public executions, and rarely did anyone care if it was your first murder/rape/arson/robbery...they just knew you weren't going to get a chance at a second! (plus, if you demonstrated those awkward behaviors at a young enough age, you likely got removed before you could breed more little freaks...) This whole argument above only exists because of the bureaucracy that has been created around the world by those who don't want to strike out on their own and make something of and for themselves. For an interesting look at what could happen to our niche societies, read World War Z by Max Brooks. As some of those commenting above have noted, (it may not be zombies, of course) even more (potentially internal to western govts) conflict appears to be on the horizon. Charismatic leaders arise when a population is ready to listen - Ben Franklin, Robespierre, Hitler, Castro, Pol Pot, Bin Laden - love them or hate them, if no one agreed with them, they would have no following...