Sure, that's a state that will persist until it doesn't.

One common barrier to suspension of disbelief is the Fermi Problem. A great deal of space opera just ignores it, but once you take the argument seriously it ruins much of the world building.

If I want to ignore rationality of the world design and just read human achievement porn I'll head over to r/HFY.

I thought that you were going to condemn the genre's ubiquitous faster-than-light communications/travel. I approach space opera as a specialized variant of high fantasy, where the usual tropes are as genre-acceptable as wizards and ghosts.

That's an external inconsistency, but SF is typically allowed one such assumption.

Ignoring the Fermi Argument is an internal inconsistency. The world just doesn't work on its own terms.