State action cannot be collective action because it compels individuals to do things that they would not do collectively, that is, in voluntary cooperation with each other. Matt Ridley says:
Human achievement is entirely a networking phenomenon. It is by putting brains together through the division of labor — through trade and specialisation — that human society stumbled upon a way to raise the living standards, carrying capacity, technological virtuosity and knowledge base of the species.
Ridley gives too little credit to individual action. But even individuals who do great things could not do them without food, shelter, medicine, and the many other things that sustain life. The “great man” may pay for those other things from his own earnings, but he relies on others to produce them. If he were to produce them for himself, his great accomplishments would suffer.
It may be romantic fancy to say that “no man is an island,” but when it comes to secular accomplishment, it is a true saying.
Politics and Prosperity 