There are three concepts here,all bunched up in a confusing way.The first concept is about survival.The second concept is about punishment.And,the third concept is about good and evil.
Many people mush up these concepts together.All living things must struggle to take in as much energy as is needed to stay alive.That is the nature of Life.In the struggle to survive,there are two components.One is to consume energy.The other is to avoid having our energy be consumed.The trick in life is not about the greed of consuming more energy than is needed,but,instead,of knowing how to avoid being consumed.One of the definitions of life is having the ability of some kind to move away from noxious stimuli.Life learns and evolves and advances by discovering what is noxious,and how to avoid it.Not the big and mighty,but the critter than can hide the best,is usually the survivor in evolution's natural selection.
As humans evolved and incorporated their knowledge of objective,or,natural "laws" into their subjective cultures,the notion of punishment evolved out of our experiences with noxious stimuli.Bucky Fullerminster hypothesized,for example,that spanking evolved from the naturally occuring noxious stimuli of falling on our rumps when we are toddlers and learning to walk.We learn from our mistakes,from what hurts or costs us energy or is in some way noxious.Plain old B.F.Skinner-type operant conditioning stuff.The problem with cultural concepts of punishment,though,is that humans kinda erroneously make up along the way WHAT should be punished.So much of what we punish people for,and reward people for,is not objectively,naturally correct.And,in research in which a rat gets a zap for touching the black button and an orgasm for touching the white button,all goes well,until the black and white buttons become both gray.Then,the rat goes a little mad and jumps high and to the left.That reaction,"high and to the left",is how your question sounds,in a world that does not make sense.
Which leads to the concept of good and evil,which also has objective roots,or,found in Nature.For example,research in the Netherlands learned that the human brainwave that matches the "mean" frequency or "brainwave" of the entire Universe is the brainwave we emit when we are feeling compassion.That is imperical evidence of what is truly "good".Being the primitive far-to-go beasties that we are,humans have subjectively been squabbling for eons over what their pet group thinks "goodness" is,or is not.But,with objective observations,humanity is really beginning to zero on what is truly "good",or,what is healthy,and,healthy for the long-run for the complicated web of life that we are connected to.
Now,all that being said,to answer your question.Your lament is an ancient and wise one.The world does not seem fair in this matter of the "good guy" always ending last.But,it is wise to consider "society" as a cattle yard with all sorts of beasts are pushing and shoving each other in a primitive jumble of ignorance and feeding frenzy.What did Jesus say?"Forgive them Father for they know not what the are doing." Most fortunately,though,many creatures,and not just humans,rise above the pack behavior and the greed and the ignorance and the fear and they emit lovely brainwaves of compassion and other such natural,healthy expressions of true "goodness".In the bigger scheme of things,whatever the Universe and probably energy itself is up to,there is growing evidence that what is truly "good" and healthy and balanced will not necessarily be "rewarded",but certainly "aprreciated" in some cosmic ecological type of way,considering how everything everywhere is connected like a web of jewels.
Our fellow humans,in their state of primitiveness and instability and ignorance,for the most part,all sense deep down what is a true good deed.So,even though subjective,cultural circumstances and individual emotional/spiritual diseases don't quite get it,your good deeds most definately do them some "good",albeit,unappreciated.Therefore,the trick to surviving without injury is to sensibly continue doing "good" deeds,but,to do so while deftly avoiding the noxious,senseless beasts here and there in their noxious,senseless,oftentimes meaningless cultural ways.