Well shucks. I think I actually agree with pretty much everthing you just said.

Doubly so on the distinction between "acts" and "people". People have alignment, which is (in theory anyway) their kinda base personality, positions, ideals, etc. Their actions *should* reflect this. When their actions dont is when there may be a conflict and need to adjust the actual alignment to match reality rather than what the player wrote on the character sheet. But it's usually the collective acts that matter, and rarely a single one.

I think maybe another notable difference between neutral and good, is that while they often will use the same criteria when deciding to harm another, a good person will feel a need to atone (whether via spell or actions), while a neutral person is more likely to be like "well, that was mean of me, but they got what was coming to them" and move on. A good person would feel bad about killing someone, even if it was necessary, and would feel the need to do something to make up for it (cause, you know... good). A neutral person less so.

And yeah, obviously, we're precluding "I killed him because he was eating a sandwich and I wanted it", kind of situations. That's evil, and people who live in that mindset are evil alignment.