Why isn't the following chain plausible? Chemical compound soup, natural reactions -> natural reaction produces the first reaction which is self replicating (I

Why isn't the following chain plausible? Chemical compound soup, natural reactions -> natural reaction produces the first reaction which is self replicating (I'd assume RNA here) -> self replication reaction dominates natural reactions (to what order, who knows) -> self replicating reaction mutates into a form that better harnesses energy from environment (your metabolism) -> metabolic empowered reaction dominates -> etc From a primatives perspective, it seems reasonable that the first "evolutionary" advances would have all been incredibly preferential. In the sense that they had no competition with similar capabilities. Imagine the first organism able to metabolise something (sunlight?) for its own purposes. Against "organisms" that were still waiting for chance to bash them against the right compound.