In that sense, lying is parasitic upon truth-telling. Lying is (in some very minor sense) self-undermining, whereas truth-telling is self-reinforcing.

You seem to be assuming some kind of Kantian-like principle of universalizability here. There's nothing self undermining about a few people lying amidst a crowd of truth tellers. The only thing that would be self undermining is if everyone did it. Actually, even that isn't self undermining since, pretty much everyone *does* lie some of the time. I guess the only way for it to be undermining is if everyone lied almost all the time.

So the argument that lying is wrong here stems from the assumption that the actions which are wrong are those which, if adopted by everyone, would lead to some kind of unravelling of society. Usually when I speak of something being morally wrong I'm thinking about relative to my individual morals... in which case, I don't think universalizability should come into play at all. If on the other hand you ask me to evaluate what is wrong from a societal standpoint, as a cultural relativist, then yes... universalizability comes into play. But the fact that it matters whether you're thinking in terms of an indvidual perspective or a cultural perspective just highlights the relativism of it.

Thanks for the links, I will read them when I get a chance--I may have read the Stanford Encyclopedia entry before, I can't remember.