It is with our private investment choices that we can alter our retirement income. We may argue about the advisability of government lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers, but personal decisions control personal exposure to smoke. It is in the myriad of small and even tiny decisions enabled by private resources that we exercise dominion over our own lives. For most of us that is where freedom lies. Whenever governments appropriate private resources to public purposes, even purposes universally acknowledged as legitimate, government must do so at the cost of personal liberty.
Every dollar collected in taxes represents a small reduction in personal liberty.
Libertarians focus on this cost, while Socialists either do not understand or appreciate these costs. Socialists correctly appreciate that personal freedom can also be circumscribed by anxiety over food, clothing, housing, or medical care. If life is wholly overwhelmed by a persistent struggle for subsistence, real and effective freedom of action is limited. It is hard to be free on an empty belly. Moreover, a society that allows everyone to rise or fall on their own market merits, an Ayn Rand utopia, will still be confronted with an irreducible number of the impoverished, those incapable of providing for themselves.