Put on your Machiavellian goggles and look at what success is and how to min/max or find an exploit before it's patched. Evil people do all the time. The question becomes - is the system rigged against being good? Is being good the expectation and so a way to herd rule followers? At this point. What is evil? The most selfish people seem to find their way to the top because they treat every connection as a transaction to further themselves. The take away is that true social relationships are economic friction which slows and traps us in our socioeconomic position. Without the encumbrance of pathos and community a person can get further in life.

The only government factor to this is that a group of people, a community, can work together to thwart the selfish individual. Times like these it sure seems that the rift between our communities is a way to distract us from stopping truly selfish people.