There's a corelation between how nice people are in general and how well laws are enforced. More consistent enforcement means people trust that other's are not getting away with stuff and so they can settle into assuming the best most often, instead of having to worry.

I feel like many places have forgotten that. Maybe law enforcement got too expensive or there were too many corrupt police but so much now is no longer enforced and so the selfish "it's okay if I can get away with it" types are winning.

Reading through these things, I was thinking about how being a high trust society is incredibly important (though to be fair, I harp on this a lot).

When I was in Cape May, I walked to the beach, and realized I'd forgotten my access pass. The person at the entrance let me borrow her bike to ride back to the house to grab my pass and bike back. You do that when you trust the people around you to behave honestly. Any time you do something to reduce that trust of strangers (it doesn't have to be crime), we erode the high-trust environment and make everyone a little worse off.

Thanks to all the kind strangers discussed in these comments for having and building social trust through your actions. Collectively, we build a safe, happy society through small kindnesses.