Ahh...Social Darwinism is Not Darwin at All

So in The New Yorker the other day, there was an article on a guy named Herbert Spencer, someone I had never heard of. I was reading the Everyday Economist blog and it linked to the article so I decided to read it after one sentence caught my eye.

“Survival of the fittest”—a phrase that Charles Darwin took from Spencer—made free competition a social as well as a natural law.

Interesting. See, I have argued with people that capitalism is actually more compassionate that socialism. (Of course I am correct. In a capitalist society, a small percentage of people live in poverty; in socialism, it is the reverse where most people live in poverty while a small percentage own all the wealth. Oh yeah, the capitalist poor are also hands down richer than the socialist masses and if the societies were mixed, the capitalist poor would be considered middle class.) The one argument I hear over and over is how life isn't about Social Darwinism, that "survival of the fittest" is mean. And yet, quite often, these same people turn around and praise Darwin and his theory of evolution, mainly to get back at religious people who do tend to donate the most. (Is this envy on the part of the so-called compassionate elitists? Who knows?)

So, I was greatly shocked to see that Darwin stole the phrase from someone using it in the same manner I was. See, I was getting criticized by a phrase invented by the guy who invented my argument. Talk about hypocrisy! Unfortunately, I didn't know it at the time, but now I do and so do you. I love seeing facts resolve in favor of my argument. So enjoyable.