Has anyone read "Villians by necessity"

[BiblioRook]

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I would argue that in such a society "Good" has clearly lost. If all evil had been banished from the world as proposed, why would anyone feel the need to steal or kill?

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Well poverty might still exist so it stands to reason that theft might as well (though it doesn't really seem like the thieves steal out of any need but rather for the challenge of doing so) and it's not as if the assassins themselves might be evil but rather that they provide a service that is taken advantage by evil people. The book basically starts with the assassin and the thief sitting around moping over the fact that basically any and all call for their areas of expertise have effectively completely dried up and that they were now obsolete.

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Now that's just not even remotely good and if the good faction hasn't even splintered over that than I wouldn't find the premise compelling.

Seriously, a society that is mind wiping thieves while there are still demons roaming about and calls itself good is actually idiotic.

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Well the fact that this is how things are happening is hardly common knowledge, it's really just the actions of a single person, the last known remaining member of the party of Heroes that took down and sealed away Evil in the first place hundreds of years ago which turned the tide of the war (He's an elf which are long lived which is why he's basically the only one still around*) and is now basically the de facto ruler of things. The... 'Big Good' as it were. Most of the rest of the world doesn't really concern themselves with just how the world as a whole has been in a state of peace and goodness and if I remember correctly not even the people who work for the elf guy really seem aware of just hat he's been doing other then that they seek out 'troublemakers' and he 'takes care of them'. I mean, taking things away from the prospective of the protagonists and to the 'good guy's' side of things, this legendary hero comes to you and says that this ragtag group of ne'erdowells are trying to bring Evil back into the world, that alone sounds like a working plot to any number of fantasy novels (which is the point), it would take a very questioning mind to say 'Well, how do we know that that's a bad thing?'
It's also probably important to know that it's not like he just did this all at once but rather has been doing it slowly over a hundred years or so...

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Spoiler: No really

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The fact that he isn't is probably my favorite twist in the book and I'm torn at if I should really say anything further on it, if even just saying that might be giving to much away.