One thing that really lacks from Pareto’s thoughts on this, imho, probably because of his historical context, is the fact that population tends to expand. Even if it might be true that elites often simply get replaced by new sets of people who will in turn become elites, it’s also true that sometimes (particularly in the last couple of centuries) such new elites can end up being larger - sometimes as a result of demographic factors (population underneath grows, so elites have to scale up as well to ensure their management), sometimes of ideological factors (e.g. a government goes from centralism to federalism, generating a lot of new intermediate roles). Which is a good thing.

Pareto’s insights too often end up being used as a call for passive cynicism. IMHO they should be seen more as a statement of possibility: elites do fall, and if you really work to ensure that fall maybe you can be the next in line, because some elite will always appear at some point and this time it might be large enough to include you.