I love the references to Wright Brothers. That also reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide by Adams: There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it.
So go try it!
The difference here is that there is people have been trying to achieve any sort of stability with cheap resistors for decades (trying to ignore basic Chaos Theory). The exact end result: That's why we have PWW and Foil resistors, which are already good solutions to the "flying" problem. It's not like we haven't taken flight before in the realm of resistor stability. The underlying reasons of how & why cheap resistors are built on a grand scale is also the reason they are more unpredictable, chaotic and not well suited for critical circuits requiring good stability. You get what you pay for. Always.
RHB, you are correct here: It IS futile to expect any device or circuit to remain "in calibration" forever. That will never happen on ANY device, no matter what components are used. That's why all precision instruments must have periodic calibration performed.
So when you design a precision device with some target "drift rate" that also must include the target calibration interval, and you also include device uncertainty calculations over say 15 minutes, an hour, a day, 30 days, 1 year, etc. This is the metrology section, so every measure and spec includes some non-zero level of uncertainty.
The main problem you'll have to overcome: Even if you had a model to predict drift of some crappy resistor, it would be impossible to predict the future use case of A LOT of variables that affect ALL resistors - Temperature, power, bias point, humidity, stress, time, duty cycle, etc. etc. etc.. Good resistors eliminate or restrict those variables down to a -much- more manageable scale.
So go start testing cheap resistors! Let us know how the prediction model works out for you - and don't forget to test repeatability after the power level changes!