That idea supports the model that our human instincts are all bad and need to be reined in by a moral code.

If it's bad, why do people want it so frequently? Are our emotional reactions bad? Are our affective desires bad? Do we treat the well-being of someone who has done wrong as equal to the well-being of someone who has been wronged?

We developed our pro-social behaviors from an extended environment where harming other people would cause a danger to ourselves. Is there a better model to tailor an environment around?

Even in the context of a stable state that mediates revenge between individuals, it is still carrying out revenge. Authorities tend to obfuscate the nature of revenge by giving it different labels, like "corrections" or "deterrence" or "enforcement", but by its substance we know it as revenge.