Ah, in that case the question would be whether this abstract form of evolution (optimality based on opportunity costs) ends up being meaningful without presupposing the special case. You say, for example, that capitalism is only metaphorically Darwinian. But what then counts as a noneconomic and non-metaphorical "cost"?

Would you say that the early universe's formation of molecules was evolutionary in this teleological sense. Did atoms sort through strategies or niches to reach optimal states, based on costs to their integrity? Do solar systems likewise evolve in that sense? We seem to be dealing here with neo-Aristotelianism. What's the amoral "optimality" of the end points that survives the disenchantment of nature?

Dawkins would say optimality or functionality is relative to the gene's viewpoint. In that case, though, the former is exactly as as-if or unreal as the latter. What we're still doing--even long after animism and the death of God--is projecting the viewpoints of organisms onto mindless natural processes. True, there's plenty of order in nature, which is why I emphasize the monstrousness of zombie-like natural regularities. That's the opposite of speaking, with Stoics, Aristotelians, and Taoists, of natural optimality. What's so optimal about monstrous developments?

But yes, you've clarified how someone could subscribe to your abstract, non-Darwinian kind of evolution without being committed to throne-and-altar conservatism. Culture does develop, and you can explain it in terms of a competition of strategies. Still, I'd wonder whether this focus on optimality and efficiency would commit you to privileging the law of oligarchy (if only on pragmatic grounds of a preference for efficiency), in which case we'd be back at social Darwinism.

I said that leading conservatives with authoritarian personalities tend to be depraved members of the upper class. I wasn't intending to cast aspersions on all conservatives. Power tends to corrupt all leaders, including liberal ones.