Exactly. And where you have a society dominated by entities acting entirely in their self interest you are likely to get instability. Society formed through the complex interplay between selfishness and altruism. An individual in the evolutionary sense is not merely contained within the physical body he inhabits, but is spread among a group of people who share, in part, the genes that describe him. As such the individuals within a genetically related grouping behave at times in a manner beneficial to the common good. This allows the machinations of society to grow in complexity over time. It allows more optimal configurations in the phase space of society to be sought out. Without this interdependence between actors, you fall foul of extreme short termism. We have pure rational self interest on a pedestal and ignored the altruism component for various historical reasons. We find ourselves in a dynamic which is destructive to the pursuit of globally optimal configurations of society.
