>Historically, the solution is to kill wealthy people until they start acting better.

Sure, but many of the really wealthy usually manage to flee elsewhere or get on the good side of the people in charge of the killing. You wind up having to settle for killing a bunch of the middle/upper middle class. Usually you start by killing the university professors, the engineers, doctors and other middle/upper middle class people who might say things that could undermine the new regime.

Then you lose a generation or two to rebuilding. All of the "successful" revolts I can think of were either a) deposing despots who used populist uprisings to seize power b) mostly autonomous territories/colonies gaining independence.