But I think people, out of the goodness of their hearts would not choose violence. I'm not that cynical about human nature.
This is where you and I differ. You (and correct me if I misspeak) believe people are inherently good, while I believe people are inherently bad. It is easy to do the wrong thing, but we must learn to do the right thing. This is evident in children and young people. If a child has a toy taken from them from another child, how often do we see the first child strike out at the second in anger? Very often, and at such a young age, this is not a learned behavior, it’s already there. Then you hear mom say, “NO (insert name here)! We don’t hit other people.”
Granted, there are those who are absolute pacifists and have been their entire lives, but I see them as the minority. The older I get, the more experience I obtain and the more exposure I have with random people, the more I realized the average person is continually resisting the bad within them, and as our society dissolves around us, the harder they must fight to keep it in (myself included). Sadly, more and more people are succumbing to that bad, evil, dark, or whatever term you choose to use, which has been there since birth and strike out against the world. I once believed people would do the right thing when given the opportunity, but I now know that is a rare thing indeed.