It makes a lot of sense. Lying and manipulation are done specifically to achieve goals. A defining characteristic of morals is that you're supposed to follow them even if it's neutral or disadvantageous for you. If someone follows "morals" to achieve a personal goal, they're not actually following morals, they're just acting in a way that incidentally looks moral.

Depends what you mean by "further". It is a trait that definitely serves well in some very lucrative areas like business or politics. But it very easy to ruin other aspects of your life like your relationships, your public image, and can run you afoul of the law. In areas of work where your image is paramount, being a liar and manipulator usually only gets you so far because it's very hard to maintain those lies and hide the manipulation under massive public scrutiny, particularly if you're doing illegal stuff in addition to it. Of course the wealthier you are, or the more fanatical your following, the more you will have others lie and manipulate on your behalf, so... accountability can decrease that way.

The Evolution of Trust

That depends on how much people with morals stick together. People are isolated so that they can be manipulated.

Yup and add intelligence to the list as well. Smart means nothing if you can't back it up with being an amoral pile of shit that takes advantage of people every opportunity you get.

Absolutely true and stating otherwise is just crowd control.

I live my life to spite these people :)

Unless you meet someone like me, who does not wait for aithorities to resolve things.

My co-workers did that literally hours ago, admited everything within moments.

I disagree, other than a few notable counter examples most times folks are only successful when they build reliable business relationships. Most relationships will dissolve if one party is playing games.

On average it's more effective to follow "The No Assholes Rule". There's plenty of studies (referenced in the book Good To Great) that indicate that humble business leaders produce build more stable and long term profitable companies.

Lying manipulators can sometimes get ahead but just as often they get found out and blackballed.

I think it might be like a game theory type situation where if everyone is honest, then the first liar might get ahead a lot (although I suspect in that situation they'd immediately be shunned by all honest folk if found out). If everyone is a liar then honest folk have nothing to hide and probably will just be really defensive in their dealings.

Really depends on where you are. These people won't get as far in stable communities where people know and talk to each other. If you are doing these things habitually as a way to get ahead, eventually everyone will figure out what is going on and will, at the very least, exclude you from the group.

This pattern is the case with most people who are especially dickish or unpleasant in one way or another. Sure, a very small number of them gain power and influence in the world at large. But most of them live shitty lives. They have few friends, and the friends they do have are shitty like them. They have no money, because they have trouble getting and keeping jobs - even low paying ones. When they manage to find romantic partners, the relationships tend to be tumultuous, since the only people they can attract are just as shitty as they are.

And water is wet

I mean, yea, that's how the economy is kinda designed for most of the world right now.

In the employee-employer relationship, the better you are as an employer at manipulating others into working for you while you retain ownership of the revenue, paying employees out percentage of what they generated as a wage while keeping the excess value as profit, is how you make a successful business.

The business-consumer relationship boils down to a transaction where you want to be the one who has the advantage on the transaction. Sellers want to sell their products for more than they're worth while the consumers want to buy those products at a discount of their perceived value. The seller's entire job is to manipulate the consumer into perceiving more value in their products than the base material value of the product to generate a revenue that exceeds the cost of its production to generate profit. That's like the basis of advertising and marketing.

I wish this wasn't true, but it's tragic that it is.