Let me introduce sociopath theory.

Their lack of morals allows them to rapidly accumulate money and power. Once entrenched, they continue amass wealth and power far beyond what is healthy for functioning societies. People don’t check this accumulation because individually they are moral humans who it pains in the extreme to seriously injure another human on their own (Luigi is an extreme exception driven by unbearable pain). But, when it gets bad enough, the poor, the losers in the sociopath race, normally isolated, begin to bond together to protect themselves from predation. This bonding together decreases the individual emotional burden of doing violence. People mob up .. emboldened by those around them. At a certain point, it goes critical and elite heads roll far and wide.

At that point, the sociopaths are purged and the moral can go back to some form of just governance for a decade or two until the sociopaths begin to claw it all back.

Que the “ableist” hate mail.

True! I was conflating a bucket of crabs and boiling frogs. I guess we're both though, so it's pretty fitting.