Nice is not really the point, though. You can be perfectly polite and simultaneously violently hostile to the idea that you should understand anything about the way that things actually work, and that the structure of civilisation will simply construct itself around your demands and protect you from any of those details.

And that process which does take place and largely constitutes what passes for modern life is then under the power and observation of parties who do understand how the underlying sausage gets made, how the parties whom they serve think and how they will react and behave. Is it any wonder they then proceed to arrange their products and services to benefit from the nature of the parties whom they serve, even in an increasingly ruthless fashion?

If people behave like cattle en masse, sooner or later a rancher will show up.

Most people are "nice", which is the same as being polite. Few will go out of their way to be good, which is not the same thing.

Apathy to suffering (and by extension other evil) is the same as being evil, especially when you are benefiting by it. Admittedly, good and evil is a spectrum - but there is a lot of apathy going around.

Yeah, "nice" is a wishy-washy word. I think most of my fellow humans are decent, by which I mean that I think they want to do the right thing, provided it's not too costly.

My faith in my fellow humans has been shaken lately, I'm afraid, by the number of people in my local grocers not wearing masks, despite a big sign on the door saying that mask-wearing is mandatory (it is - that's the law at the moment, around here).