My alarm bells would go off if someone claimed to know what is best for the whole species. If individuals are not rational as you say, then how would politicia

My alarm bells would go off if someone claimed to know what is best for the whole species. If individuals are not rational as you say, then how would politicians, technocrats or other central planners be rational? If an individual doesn't have the right to coerce you, how does a collective of individuals have the right to coerce you? Individualism is the decentralization of information and decision making. It has a different failure mode. If we accept that men are fallible, then individualism allows for a competition of solutions and ideas. Humans will never be perfect. Decentralization allows us to progress and iterate faster than central planning, which has all of the same problems with what you call "irrationality".