The most distressing thing about the bad people in my country is that even the worst of them are convinced that "it is right to be so." This has to do with the Puritan roots of the country, I think. (Cf. Santayana's apercu in Lat Puritan about the Puritan who was so Puritan, he couldn't be a Puritan.)
So the "we're all in this together" instant rapport of people who lend their moral force on the strength of an idle rumor or two, the placeholders, the Machiavels of middle management (who make up most of the professsariat), all of these social forms are percolating without any sense of duty to good itself, and occasionally explicitly thinking it a historical adversary.
The machine is being run by a small portion of the population, not on a meritocratic basis, but on a best-fit-for-the-role system of ad hoc judgment. The forms of industry ensure prosperity for a solid preponderance, a much higher percentage than in the past, but if you take the platitudes and nostrums of the society to be even an indication of the actual goals of the society, you won't do well. The success of the machine is in what it makes; the success of the society is in how well it preserves and develops the humanity of each person within it.