Firstly, that pessimistic attitude is invading the minds of many and all it does is confuse values and prevent progress, so I would recommend focusing on doing what you can to assert your values and bring change rather than spreading fatalism.
Secondly, this formulation has been done to a great extent by Ayn Rand, and reading Peikoff's full exploration of her ideas would be a great way to see this in detail. I think her prejudice prevents her from reasoning accurately on some higher-level points, but the point is that ethics and politics can be derived from basic axioms specifically because all humans have one core value of their own continued existence. I've been working the details out and I'd like to talk about it if you are interested in playing with the ideas.