How do people decide when it’s time for the government to change? Here's the text:

Imagine a world where the poor remain poor forever, no matter how hard they work, and the rich stay rich no matter what. This was what life was like in Europe during the 1700s, and nowhere was the gap between the rich and the poor more apparent than in France. France was a monarchy, which means it was ruled by a king and/or queen. The French aristocracy was among the richest in Europe by the late 1700s. They controlled everything, and forced the poor, who made up 97% of the country, to work for them for very little pay. Many of them worked in harsh conditions. They were often dirty, sick, and starving. Needless to say, they were not happy. But then something amazing happened—in 1776, thirteen of Great Britain’s colonies on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean rebelled against the king...and they succeeded! They gained their independence from King George, and with it, the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This inspired the lower classes in France. They finally felt that there might be hope for the future. The king of France, Louis XVI, had given money to the American colonies during their revolution because he considered Great Britain to be a rival. Louis XVI had already inherited a lot of debt from his predecessors, and after the American Revolution he looked for a way to pay it all back. The upper classes refused to pay taxes, so he organized a council with representatives from all the classes—even the lowest—to see if a solution could be found. Because the lower classes had larger populations, they got more representatives, and this made Louis nervous. The lower class representatives were often excluded from meetings, and so they began to meet on their own. They decided it was time to stand up for the peasants. The government needed to change. Soon, everyone was abuzz with ideas about how a new government should work. Louis XVI felt threatened, so he stationed troops all over Paris to quell any rebellion. The troops were outnumbered by angry peasants, who gained control over the Bastille, a large French prison, in 1789. It was the beginning of the fight to set up a new, radical government. The French Revolution was far from over at this point, but the storming of the Bastille in 1789 was the main catalyst for what was to come. The monarchy would fall, but a new republic would give way to another monarchy, and to other forms of government as well. Today, however, the French government is a republic, which means that there is an elected government with a president and a congress, much like the United States government—all thanks to the French Revolution. How do people decide when it’s time for the government to change?