I disagree with the author on this one. It’s not the “elite” that are destroying individualism. It’s the complexity of the modern world. It’s pretty much impossible to be a “rugged individual” once you leave an agrarian world and live in a society where 99.99% of the things you need to survive are made by someone else and sold to you.
“... where 99.99% of the things you need to survive are made by someone else and sold to you.”
And the “someone elses” are in faraway, untrustworthy countries. This dependency, however, is the result of our communications and transportation revolutions.