Fair enough, Dan, but I would argue that the issue isn't quite as binary as you (and indeed many others) suggest. After all, it is possible for government to provide a basic level of service and security to its citizenry without ensuring their total and collective dependence upon it. (In fact, most industrialized nations already do this and have done for decades with free markets, fair trade, individual autonomy, and wealth inequality all inarguably intact.)

The choice need not be between unbridled capitalism and a dictatorship of the proletariat, but simply between self-interested empathy and self-defeating (social) Darwinism.