All that may be true, but is somewhat besides the point. We are after all discussing Brian's approving[?] summation of Nietzsche as "demanding above all else that people wake up and take responsibility".
Collectivist ontologies do no [necessarily] deny the existence of [some version of] the self, but the question is what to make of the "demand" that "above all else", these selfs "take responsibility"? Is there a value to such demands beyond mere shallow lecturing?
Now, there are responsibilities and there are responsibilities. Hence, as I have mentioned many times, Chomsky's thoughts on the "responsibility of intellectuals". But that is a very different thing. Your example of deaths resulting from improper driving is a good one, I think, for my purpose. I offered in a different thread, the details of a close personal friend whose brother died in an accident involving a drunk. I mentioned at that time that both she and her family were puzzled at all the focus (verging on blood- thirstiness) on the offending driver, to the point where the police and prosecutor could just not get the fact that she or her parents plain did not care.
The cliche of 'personal responsibility' is, of course, familiar to us -- it is one of the central pillars of [modern] right-wing reasoning. Yesterday, when I had had a beer too many, you may have convinced me that Nietzsche, as seen by Brian, was using the term in the Chomskian sense. Now that I am sober I would find it impossible to believe anything but that if Nietzsche were to use the term he would use it quite the opposite sense, given the rest of his writings.
So, to restate, IMHO, the question is not whether socialism will rid us of the idea of personal responsibility, or whether such a riddance would eliminate inequalities. Rather, it is this: what is the purpose [behind and served by] "demands" for personal responsibility? Would people waking up and taking responsibility (in any sense in which Nietzsche could have meant it, not Chomsky) eliminate inequalities?
[This is not a response to Brian, to whom I will respond on his reply to my post]
--ravi