If you disagree, I would argue you have a very sad view of the world, where truth and cooperation are inferior to lies and manipulation.
You're holding everyone to a very simple, very binary view with this. It's easy to look around and see many untrustworthy players in very very long running games whose success lasts most of their own lives and often even through their legacy.
That doesn't mean that "lies and manipulation" trump "truth and cooperation" in some absolute sense, though. It just means that significant long-running games are almost always very multi-faceted and the roads that run through them involve many many more factors than those.
Those of us who feel most natural being "truthful and cooperative" can find great success ourselves while obeying our sense of integrity, but we should be careful about underestimating those who play differently. They're not guaranteed to lose either.
While banditry can work out in the short term; it pretty much always ends up the same way. There aren’t a lot of old gangsters walking around.
There are actually fascinating theories that the origin of money is not as a means of replacing a barter system, but rather as a way of keeping track who owed favors to each other. IOUs, so to speak.
I do not see how that is possible considering I have no clue who the second last owner of a cash was before me, most of the time.
Modern cash systems involve anonymity and do not inherently keep track of the ownership history of money (as I noted). This anonymity is a fundamental feature of cash and many forms of currency today. Sure, early forms of currency might have functioned in small, close-knit communities and in such contexts, people were more likely to know each other’s social debts and relationships.
My point about cash being anonymous was meant to highlight how modern currency differs from the historical concept of money as a social ledger. This contrast is important because it shows how much the role of money has evolved.