alt Hacker NewsEvil simply has more options available than good. Sure, those options, like all options, have pros and cons. Cancer, like sociopathy, can have a pretty good run even if it ends ultimately in demise.
I very much want to push back against any bias towards a just world. Bad people often live their whole lives without any consequence (think prostate cancer) while good people struggle (think my cuticles, which deserve much more than I usually give).
The cynical view suffers from availability bias - it's easy for us to think of someone who sticks out through bad behavior, but somehow gets away with it, precisely because it is not normal. (1)
But if you look at long timescales, it's pretty obvious that cooperation is the more powerful strategy.
We used to live in tribes of hunter gatherers, in constant danger from a hostile environment. Now, we're part of a global technological superorganism that provides for us.
If free-loading was a dominant strategy, this would never have developed.
(1) From the evolutionary biology point of view this can be explained by rate dependent selection- meaning the strategy is strong as long as only a small fraction of a population employ it. Durkheim would probably say you need these people to establish what the norms of a society are.