If we could create a society of angels–of morally/psychologically perfected human beings–then as James Madison observed 200 years ago, no government would be necessary. All necessary social forms and decisions would emerge as spontaneous order, as the self organization characteristic of a complex system.
If we, on the contrary, posit a society of greedy, lying, lazy, ignorant sons and daughters of bitches, then no amount of compulsion will create a complex order. Tyranny will be necessary for the maintenance of even a semblance of order.
Socialists like egalitarianism because it can be measured. Having rejected the notion of quality, they have nothing but grotesque quantitative measures. One can say “income inequality rose last year”, and this can be measured (and it can be ignored that everyone’s quality of life improved further from an already elite level, seen from a global and historical perspective). One cannot say that “overall Goodness in the United States dropped by two points last year.” They are making efforts at this with happiness, but I think this misses the point that happiness is the result of self respect, which is the result of believing in something bigger than yourself and working to build it.
Put another way: Individualism is the creed that individual acts of beauty are possible and desirable. Anti-Individualism is the belief that only State acts of beauty are possible and desirable.
Actually, this is an over-simplification, but I am not going to take the time to clarify it. I have already spent half the day preaching to the winds. Time to go work out.