Do we have a genetic disposition driving us towards pathological altruism?

Here is a purely speculative thought I woke with this morning, the product of several tangential conversations over the past few days in combination with somnolent noodling.

The predicate is the observation that in many countries, particularly in the US, the bottom quintile of income earners objectively live better lives than royalty and aristocrats a hundred and more years ago. This type of observation goes all the way back to Adam Smith when he observed that the meanest laborer in a market economy with division of labor commanded products unavailable to monarchs of yore. A more modern version is the entertaining I, Pencil by Leonard Read.

Our poorest citizens live longer, healthier lives than Pharaoh did. They have more education than Pharaoh could have had. Their daily environment is safer, more comfortable and more sophisticated than Pharaoh's. There is only one way, that I can think of, in which our poorest quintile come off worse than Pharaoh. Pharaoh could command people. He had autocratic control over large numbers of people who operated at his beck and call, either as concubines or as builders of his pyramids.

That single distinction is what leads to the thought.

We see all around us people who are materially well off. But we have two sociologically peculiar conditions. Our government structures are notorious for attracting people who are willing to flout the law in order to exercise the coercive power of government. They may or may not get rich from their political position but they appear to be happy with the reward of commanding others. The second phenomenon is that of those who actually lead productive lives. It is not uncommon for them to undertake enthusiastic but almost pathological acts of altruism. I will help you no matter how much it harms you seems to be the spirit.

From that tissue of an observation, it makes me wonder. Do we have a gene that compels us towards dominance and control of others? It might tie together and explain both sets of phenomenon above.

Despite all the objective evidence that the poorest quintile are orders of magnitude better off than the top quintile of a century ago, they see themselves as worse off as does everyone else. And if we are compelled by a biological urge to dominance then, no matter how good their physical well-being, because they are positionally and tautologically worse off simply by being definitionally bottom quintile when our biology compels us towards the top quintile.

Similarly, in a democratic republic based on the consent of the govern, such a gene would explain the compulsion of people towards both government power as well as the pathological altruism where the privileged seek to coercively fix the underprivileged.

Obviously there are all sorts of other issues and contributors in these outcomes, but it makes me wonder.

UPDATE: Possible support from Science explains why it's so easy to get sucked into fights on the Internet by Brian Resnick.