The problem with the optimistic ending is that the short-term payoff for honesty would have to be greater than the short-term payoff for lying in nearly all circumstances. This is clearly never going to occur. Any longer-term downside is discounted by the average person as we haven't evolved to estimate longer-term impact with any degree of accuracy. This is because for 98% of our evolutionary history the short-term was all that mattered. Tomorrow was too uncertain and unpredictable to worry about, as a wide range of exogenous factors were far more significant than any self-created problems such as lies. Hence we will always be a deceiving species, especially when so many are so readily taken in by even the most pathetically obvious infantile lies. Brexit and Trump spring irresistibly to mind, but they are merely the tip of an enormous metaphorical iceberg.