1. Lost and found stations at events. People find stuff, people nearby don't claim it and often don't care if it's taken, but the finder still makes the effort to give it to lost and found or staff. Everytime I've done this, there've been a lot of unclaimed items. Each of those is evidence of, if not altruism, at least morality.
2. The vast majority of people don't shoplift, even at stores that put goods out front with no employees watching.
3. Charities, soup kitchens, anonymous donors.
We should be careful to not mistake cynicism as wisdom.
Counter-counterpoint(?): the difference between high trust society and a low trust society is not the number of 'bad' people, but the number of apathetic people when they witness the actions of the bad actors and do nothing.
> To me, this is just how people tend to behave, no matter their age.
One of my favourite studies is just random virtue testing of strangers. Will they return lost property? It's easy, cheap, and frequently replicated.
The researchers "lose" a bunch of fairly typical wallets in discreet-but-obvious places, with some cash inside. The people who find the wallet have the opportunity to take the cash in the wallet, or just the whole wallet.
In most countries, the majority of wallets are returned to their owners, with the cash intact. In countries like Sweden or Japan, you can reasonably expect your wallet to be returned - rates are over 80%.
Most people are good. Or at least, they don't want to be a thief. Given the opportunity to get away with stealing a small amount of money, most people opt to go out of their way, even if it's just a few minutes of their time, to help the person get their wallet back.
Does he believe current generations do?
> They will do whatever they want once they are confident that nobody will know.
To me, this is just how people tend to behave, no matter their age.