Edit: Reading up on Social Darwinism on Wikipedia, Britannica and History.com, I guess not. Social Darwinism seems either not well-defined and/or assumes that the fitness functions that natural evolution worked out need to be taken nearly as it is. I am not saying the latter.
I am saying there needs to be more clearly defined fitness functions (call them performance criteria, KPIs, etc.), defined for the modern times, which then need to be more consistently followed. This isn't much different than using gradient descent algorithm where some weights are changed in accordance to their impact on the chosen loss function.
Right question to ask, and I do not have have good answers currently. But here are some thoughts:
First, a clarification over what I am not challenging with the status quo. In nature, some organisms are higher up in the food chain and freely kill others. We do NOT define 'fit' in the way where those who are better at killing other humans are favored for survival. We have already set this right by creating laws that punish homicide. This bends the optimum from favoring more physical strength to favoring people to make good overall social contributions, which can be intellectual as well.
The value society should provide to an individual should (generally) be based on the value they provide to the society. This is already majorly the case. However, I challenge inheritances where someone may just be born with a lot more than others without having made those contributions to the society. There are debates present online on this alone, and I cannot claim that the social choice should be exactly this way or that way.
In a democracy, people (except children, etc.) are given equal right to vote. I do not find this optimal. People who understand social dynamics, policies and promises of various parties well (which does not include me) should have more influence on which party should get selected. I do not know how this could be implemented. Perhaps a quiz along with the vote?
I know these are not good and realistic examples. I'll need to think more. However, I do often feel that people who do good and think for the society struggle more while those who put themselves higher at the cost of the society often end higher up.
Edit: Reading up on Social Darwinism on Wikipedia, Britannica and History.com, I guess not. Social Darwinism seems either not well-defined and/or assumes that the fitness functions that natural evolution worked out need to be taken nearly as it is. I am not saying the latter.
I am saying there needs to be more clearly defined fitness functions (call them performance criteria, KPIs, etc.), defined for the modern times, which then need to be more consistently followed. This isn't much different than using gradient descent algorithm where some weights are changed in accordance to their impact on the chosen loss function.