by Jonathan Young

Created on: November 21, 2007

Social Darwinism is based upon the popular notion of "survival of the fittest," in which fitness is mistaken for rightness. When scientists refer to fitness, they're talking about a process in which the genotype of the individual who reproduces the most becomes more common. The individual's phenotype, or genes plus environment, determine the individual's fitness.

And when we look at the environment portion of the phenotype, we see that evolution is random. When biologists like Richard Dawkins describe evolution as being non-random, what they mean is that natural selection does not do crazy, arbitrary things like give deer glow-in-the-dark antlers. But Dawkins is not suggesting that natural selection is willful or calculating.

In logic, the authority fallacy is a belief in the rightness of an argument based purely upon the perceived credibility of the source. In the case of social Darwinism, this authority is nature. In this view, whatever nature produces is "right," because the superior genotype is destined to "defeat" the inferior one. But in reality, nature selects the genotype that is best-suited to its environment, regardless of what the genotype thinks of itself. The genotype may think of itself as really smart and sexy and righteous, but if a super-virus emerges that can wipe out this genotype in a matter of decades, such a belief doesn't matter. A random change in the environment matters more than the perceived superiority of the common genotype. (Dinosaurs would be the most obvious example. Had dinosaurs been self-aware, they probably would have thought of themselves as the most scarily cool and invincible things nature ever made.)

Within the human ecological niche, there are abundant resources and exactly zero competitors. We have the run of the place, in other words. But social Darwinists believe that only a select few of us are entitled to these abundant resources. They believe that free markets reward the fittest genotypes, and that the free market is therefore an authority. This is an extension of the "nature is right" authority fallacy: the free market is considered to be an authority, therefore whatever the free market does must be right. "The free market gave us wealth," they reason, "so we must be entitled to wealth."

Historically, rich people gather surplus resources for several hundred years, and then a group of poor people invade the royal palace, kill the rich people, and take the resources for themselves. "Nature (or God) gave us the strength

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