bandits aren't "evil". They simply have fallen into the trap evolution has laid for us all: rationalizing actions that benefit them.

I suspect that humanities [sic] worst moments come from a combination of evil and stupidity

Witness:

    - Failure of military leaders to recognize the implications 
      of advancing firearms technology starting in the Civil War
    - Failure of national governments to recognize the geopolitical instability
      embodied by the competing systems of alliances prior to WWI
    - Failure of national governments to recognize the economic and political
      instability caused by treaties prior to WWII
    - Disconnect of German leadership from reality through advocacy of 
      economic and biological pseudoscientific theories 
    - Disconnect of Soviet leadership from social and economic reality 

It seems that the caveman-mob level of broken thinking we exhibit as national groups caused all sorts of technology-amplified havoc in the 19th and 20th centuries.

I wonder if it's any better in the 21st century?

    - Burgeoning US debt, and the political impediments to solving it
    - Calamitous global environmental changes, also accompanied by political
      impediments to solution

What are the odds of solving our current problems without bloodshed? Probably very near zero. The best we can hope for is to limit the scope of bloodshed to militants, small regional conflicts, and assassinations. After all, we are still mostly just mobs of tribal cavemen.