How libertarians can join conservatives in applauding the value of altruism

The great scientist E.O. Wilson has said that group-selection supersedes individual selection: "The competition between the two forces can be succinctly expressed as follows: Within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. Or, risking oversimplification, individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue."

Libertarians can join conservatives in applauding the value of altruism, which was developed by group-selection preferences, and was the social foundation of most religions and political philosophies. Libertarian philosophers missed that distinction, which makes the differences between free trade and fair trade. Since most of the libertarian philosophers were refugees from totalitarian political systems that probably made them prefer the concept of individual freedom over group freedom, which was an unfortunate bias. It gave capitalism a bad name.

Both group-selection and individual selection are mainly driven by the biological origin of social behavior, although there is a co-evolution between nature and nurture. This subject moves into epistemology when we ask the question, can knowledge alone be reality, or is knowledge defined as being in harmony with reality which then brings human satisfaction? Biology comes before knowledge of biology and our knowledge needs to harmonize with biology rather than only dwelling in a world of abstractions and calling it knowledge of reality and settling for a lesser satisfaction with that.