There’s nothing arbitrary about measuring the survival of states only in comparison to states that are remotely comparable. The US has been far more stable than say medieval Venice (or again really almost anything else that could have qualified as a state), but the nature of the states and their purposes are so fundamentally different that there’s no point in comparing the two. Yes, Imperial China was stable for millennia, but nobody thinks that form of governance is superior to that of modern democracy.
That I don’t think you should be calling my claims about Tytler ignorant considering that your earlier posts suggest you knew nothing about him when you made you’re first post does not mean that’s why I think he was a monarchist. I think that because he was one.
Let’s try this again:
1. Democracies are stable (at least one has lasted for centuries), much in the same way you could conclude that the fact that people have been eating chulent for a long time is a good way to prepare meat within the restrictions of shabbos. If someone had said two hundred years ago that chulent was was not a possible way to do that, it would be entirely reasonable to conclude that the fact that it’s been done for 200 years now would make that persons assessment suspect.
2. Any recent evidence would suggest that they’re a lot more stable than many other forms of government that have been experimented with in the last 250 years.
The Goldman Sachs example fails so long as the analyst in question is not making the same argument consistently over a 250 year period to prove that investment banking isn’t a sustainable business model. It’s possible that conditions and/or Goldman’s practiced might make it less sustainable, but it’s really beyond question that investment banking is a theoretically sound business.
Are you under the impression that any country in Europe, again with Hungary as the exception and the factors there are different, has any chance of ceasing to be a democracy any time soon? Democracies weather financial collapses well. It’s one of the reasons they’re so much more stable than other types of government.