A cyclotron accelerator strips atoms of their outer electrons, leaving them with a positive charge. The resulting melange of free electrons and positively charges atoms is called plasma.
Plasma functions in a collective way, oscillating as a whole, yet its components move freely and individually. When two electrons are completely isolated, they maintain an interaction over a long distance. But in a plasma, this long-range interaction is shielded by the presence of an astronomical number of additional particles. Because this demands that all particle interactions become short range, electrons move freely within the collective, with individual movements.
The long-range interaction, however, has not completely vanished. Rather, its shadowed impetus is what allows the plasma to behave coherently.
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If a society could behave like a plasma, an ideal balance between serving oneself and one's community would emerge. Capitalism brags that it achieves this balance of perfect individual freedom experienced while serving the common good. Pragmatically speaking, however, capitalism exists only in the hope that service to the common good might somehow be fomented from claustrophobic nests of self-committed individuals.
