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.