I will not -- you'll be disappointed to hear -- actually answer this question in this post. Instead, I'll discuss the structure of several possible answers, so that we can better think about how to think about thinking about the question.
(Added in revision: Okay, I couldn't resist concluding with a guess, but the guess isn't the point.)
The Shape of the Curve
Here's a coarse cut of the possibilities:
Moral order: Those who act morally well tend to do better overall than the morally mediocre, who in turn tend to do better than those who act badly. The relationship is monotonic: Increasing your moral goodness tends to have good consequences for you in the long run.
Moral disorder: There is no relationship between moral goodness and personal good consequences. The virtuous and the wicked are equally likely to thrive or suffer.
Immoral order: The wicked tend to thrive and the virtuous to suffer. The relationship is monotonic, but in the negative direction.
Mediocrity thrives: Both the virtuous and the wicked tend to suffer; those in the moral middle do best.
U-shaped curve: The morally worst and morally best thrive, while the middling suffer.
More complex and less obvious patterns are of course also possible.
The Social Variability of Moral Order
A universalist about moral order holds that the same general curve obtains at all times, in all societies. Always, everywhere, from hunter-gatherer bands to ancient China to Stalinist Russia to 21st-century Argentina, the virtuous tend to thrive and the vicious suffer, or vice versa.A relativist about moral order holds that the relationship varies with social conditions. Maybe the wicked tended to thrive in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany while the virtuous tend to thrive in small-scale, high trust societies.
The Mechanisms of Moral Order
Transcendent views appeal to an afterlife in which justice is done. The wicked may briefly thrive on Earth but they suffer eternally in Hell, while the virtuous are rewarded in Heaven. Or the wicked are reincarnated into unpleasant lives and the virtuous into pleasant lives. Ordinary secular life may not be morally ordered but in the long run the afterlife restores order.
Psychological views of moral order appeal to the ordinary psychological features of human nature. We see versions of this picture in Dostoevsky and Shakespeare and many other great writers (but by no means all great writers). Commit a grievous crime, or treat others badly, and you will suffer in the long run. You'll be tormented with guilt, or you'll be unable to find intimacy with others because of the secret wrongs you carry and cannot share, or you'll be tempted into more and greater crimes until eventually everything collapses around you. (Think Crime and Punishment and Macbeth.) What you gain through wrongdoing brings no real satisfaction. Instead, the happy are those who treat others well and who are loved in return. Helping others is among the deepest sources of satisfaction, outshining the superficial glint of prestige, power, and gold.
Social views of moral order rely on social mechanisms. These overlap with psychological mechanisms and can complement them. If you treat others well, they will tend to treat you well. What goes around comes around. Criminals tend eventually to be caught and punished. Society recognizes and rewards virtue.
Mechanisms with the reverse causal direction: It could also of course be the case that having bad things happen to you or being unhappy tends to cause immoral behavior, rather than the reverse. Maybe those who are already thriving can better afford to be generous, patient, and forgiving. The unhappy become the wicked, rather than the wicked becoming unhappy. When causation runs this direction, it's less obvious that a morally ordered world is also a just world.
Some Mechanisms of Disorder
It sure seems like the vicious often thrive. The most successful politicians, business leaders, and movie stars are not a parade of saints. Unethical tactics and a willingness to step on others often seems to serve people well.Certainly in some cases, sacrifice for others leaves people worse off. If you let others escape first from a sinking boat, you're more likely to drown. If you give all of your money to charity, you're less likely to have a monetary reserve to help you through a health crisis or unemployment. If you love meat but become an ethical vegetarian, you lose a regular daily pleasure.
Mediocrity might be socially favored. Arguably, people don't actually like do-gooders, who make them look bad in comparison. Society and our peers expect and reward conformity, to the disadvantage of both the most virtuous and the most vicious. For most people, it's also just psychologically uncomfortable to be too different from others.
And if we're willing to consider transcendent sources of moral order, we might also contemplate transcendent sources of immoral order, such as an evil god who sends the good to Hell and the wicked to Heaven. (Okay, okay -- I'm kidding. 95% kidding.)
Dependency on Visions of Morality
The facts about moral order are of course not independent of facts about what is moral (I'm assuming there are such facts). For example, if flat-footed act utilitarianism is true, we might be morally required to sacrifice almost everything we have for the sake of the people who are worst off in the world, creating immense hardship for ourselves. A less demanding ethics, one that prizes the value of personal relationships and tolerates luxury and leisure within limits, permits a more comfortable life alongside moral excellence.
Similarly, an ethics with severe sexual restrictions, or one that treats every prideful thought as a sin, risks creating tension between our natural inclinations and what is ethically right, potentially creating hardship and displeasure for those who are good by its standards.
If the ancient Chinese philosopher Mengzi is right, what pleases the heart is good and what is good pleases the heart. Morality and happiness thus naturally go hand in hand. An ethical system that treats many ordinary human desires and impulses as wicked is more challenging (but not impossible) to reconcile with happiness.
A Guess: An Imperfect, Contingent Moral Order in Healthy Societies
Is the world, then, morally ordered? To answer this question is simple. Just whip out your moralometer and your happinessometer (or even better, your prudential-good-ometer), test them on a random sample of all people from all times and places, and look at the shape of the curve! (Here's one imperfect attempt.)My guess, contingent upon a somewhat relaxed, soft-touch, forgiving morality: Yes, in most well-functioning societies, there is a positive relationship -- imperfect, of course, with a small-to-medium effect size -- between being morally good and thriving in the things that matter most to your own well-being. But this is a tricky empirical question.
