As mentioned in the comments, plain text keys aren’t bad because they are necessary. You have to have at least one plain text key in order to be able to use encryption

  • But can you trust that a user will pick a difficult to break password? They likely will pick something simple to remember but that is not a good password.

    The we are just back to essentially having a plaintext password because if the attacker has a good dictionary, it will be easy to crack.