@axblain @chris By that argument, a person living under Louis XVI could comfortably conclude that the monarchy would continue until France itself ceased to exist from mismanagement. In reality, the people revolted in response to said mismanagement and the king lost his head.

More realistically, one could also have used this during the first Gilded Age in the US and extrapolated from there to a similar collapse, and you would have also missed similar developments within the system that prevented that from happening (developments which themselves were democratic and did not involve revolution.)

In short: "it hasn't happened so far, therefore I don't see it happening soon" is a terrible argument when it comes to complicated systems like societies.