>Humanity makes progress when removing illusions from society and being rational. Society shouldn't be punishing persons who were unfortunate by the universe. Society should fix the problem of what resulted in a person having an undesired outcome and then rehabilitating the person back into society. Same goes for social, health, and financial problems.

So if you believe in group selection has a large role in how society is shaped and will evolve then perhaps society's best interest is only to rehabilitate the troubled person only if the expected cost is lower than the expected reward. If you don't believe in group selection is that crucial then maybe it would be apparent why people like to punish if you take a look at game theory and experimental results with public good games. Keep in mind you are also making the mistake of assuming society has some sort of telos, or that moralism realism is true. So in that sense, if you ask me China's government seems very sensible in several policy areas because it doesn't give a shit about individuals.