Socialism provides a safety net at the bottom end of the social achievement scale so that you don't end up with large homeless populations living under bridges.

Socialism provides a safety net at the bottom end of the social achievement scale so that you don't end up with large homeless populations living under bridges. The notion that socialism cuts off the heads of over-achievers to enforce a dull sameness on society is basically a straw man argument that doesn't correlate at all with how socialist governance works in practice. Some will point to higher taxes on billionaires as a counterexample, but it's equally clear that the wealthiest rely heavily on things like roads, ports, etc. (to get goods from one place to another), and since without that infrastructure they'd have little opportunity to accumulate wealth, higher taxes on that wealth are appropriate.