Did Social Darwinism discourage government regulation?

Social Darwinism, with its emphasis on the survival of the fittest, was generally opposed to many kinds of regulation. However, most Social Darwinists did not favour a complete free-for-all. At the very least, most acknowledged that there had to be laws to protect life, liberty and property and that these laws had to be enforced. So, even in economic life Social Darwinists wanted a level playing field of sorts, where fraud (and certain unfair practices) would be banned. Please note that in Social Darwinist thought, there is an awareness that human beings in society need to live by somewhat different rules from human being in nature, in the wild. They certainly did not equate "fit" with "brawny"; they stressed, for example, the role of intelligence as a form of fitness, and Francis Galton and others played a part in the development of the psychometric intelligence theory. Many were intellectuals and had a Horror of rule by thuggery. The early Social Darwinists usually claimed that their theories had an ethical dimension.