Imagine, for a moment, that we lived in a society where the highest good--in fact, the only good--was personal autonomy and the equal satisfaction of desire for all.
The sole purpose of society, then, would be to facilitate this process and allow individual autonomy to be realised and expressed.
If the individual were to be born into duties to the collective in such a society, this would constitute a bad, because his or her autonomy would be restricted. Personal autonomy and many goods (or many things that were traditionally thought of as goods) would be antagonistic. Think of, for example, predetermined roles, like gender roles, that people are expected to fall into. Whatever custom dictates, it is generally going to be in conflict with our one true good.
This is a problem, right? The solution is that something is going to have to prevent these traditional institutions from materially influencing the lives of the autonomous inhabitants of alterna-world. Who could do such a thing? It could only be a person or institution powerful enough to override the inherited structures, institutions, mores, and so on, and so enable individuals to live as individuals and not parts of some larger whole.