It's commonly said that politics is about "who gets what, when, and how." Individualism is not concerned with "who," "what," or "when" apart from "how."

    How does one acquire his or her wealth -- through voluntary interaction, or through force or fraud? As long as he exerts no physical force and commits no fraud, his wealth, regardless of who he obtains it from, what he uses it for, or when he acquires it, should be free from political interference. Even if:

• There is an economic recession, an energy crisis, a hurricane, or some other momentary social problem.
• He spends his money on things that others deem wasteful or excessive.
• A powerful interest group says it "needs" his wealth.
  
• A majority of the voters demand that his money be spread throughout society.
  
• A politician claims that the "social good" requires him to give up his wealth.

    A free-market economy is governed by a set of procedural rules defining the legitimate means that may be employed to obtain values. In general, those means include anything that is peaceful and voluntary, and no more. If someone commits an act of aggression or fraud, then (and only then) government intervention is justified.

    According to individualist morality, it is wrong for individuals or groups to initiate force against other individuals.  Government is unlike most groups of individuals, to be sure. It has a monopoly on the use of force.  But in a free society, government may only use its coercive power in a defensive role, to respond to the use or threat of force against citizens.  It may not initiate force.  

    This -- the non-agression principle, first articulated by Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand -- is the basis of individual freedom.

    By contrast, an advocate of capitalism who attempts to ground the idea of limited government on a social consequentialist (i.e., who, what, when) foundation, repudiates the meaning and purpose of freedom. By resting the case for limited government on liberty's social benefits, consequentialism treats individual freedom as a mere tool for achieving collective goals.

    Utility to society means one of two things: the aggregation of all the wants of all the individuals in society or else some notion of what individuals should want. The former is the method of the centrist, who formulates his pol icy positions by constantly turning to opinion polls and/or his own understanding of the dominant social values and norms. The latter is the method of the totalitarian, who believes government's purpose is to forcibly reshape not only society, but human nature itself.

    The advocate of freedom is not at all interested in using government to maximize social utility. Freedom is, fundamentally, the celebration of individuality -- each individual peacefully doing whatever he values. Statism, by contrast, is the governmental suppression of individuality, purportedly for the purpose of achieving social goals.

    To argue that the social benefits of freedom exceed those of statism and use such a comparison as an attempt to justify freedom is to play right into the statists' hands.  If an advocate of liberty concedes that socialism's coercion of individuals is unimportant (or would be unimportant if the social benefits outweighed the social harms), then he has conceded that being free from coercion is not in itself important, or even relevant.

    According to individualism, it's the only thing that's relevant.