The "Rebirth of Reason" discussion board also has a related topic thread, "Ayn Rand's Philosophy as Pre-Darwinian" here http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/General...

That discussion ranges wide and I point to the exchange between Ed Thompson and myself over studies of infants that purport to show natural or innate altruism. These have been accepted by some Objectivists to show natural _fairness_, something much different from altruism, of course. I rejected that based on an actual reading of these studies. In fact, the researchers among a dozen villages and hunters found that markets teach fairness: peoples in tribes who are not integrated with nearby markets tend to be far less "fair" by our understanding.

See also the topic here in the Gulch, "In God We Trust, but not each other..." Our own drift away from a market society has been accompanied by a concomitant distrust of others.