Umm, what the majority of players would want to do does not matter, as this all comes back to me saying what I'd do if I had the region, which was a matter of egotism. Furthermore, whether players want to or not, they end up sitting in the same region for months on end regardless of their capacity (usually it's the capital). With such a drought in wars, there is nothing else to do. So your idealism is misdirected, it should be aimed at generating more wars not disparaging the ruthless economic exploitation of peasants.
Encouraging the ruthless exploitation of peasants discourages war, because war forces lords away from their regions, prevents knights from doing civil and police work, and looting hurts production and morale direction. War is bad for the economy, when peace allows ruthless exploitation of the peasants and war does not. It makes people think that they should make peace a bit to amass funds for a later war, but then the peace can always be stretched on, indefinitely, because there'll never be enough funds stacked up for a future war.
