But would they at least be willing to let people keep the pleasure slaves? No progress would diminish their economic usefulness.
As long as all that Atlantean science doesn't leak to Japan,
because if it does...
Actually, where does our country land socially- and ethically-wise? The changes in society and philosophy might not be as rapid as with technology.
Iceland was quite independent before the 11th century, more akin to a frontier Norse society composed mostly of free men than a medieval one composed of servants, and they inherited that. Most of the labor force in Vinland is made of wage workers who are not subject to the conditions the British workers of the historical Industrial revolution did because their country still is small, sparsely populated and exporting to natives ensured the demand is always higher than the supply and thus unemployment is too small to bring down wages to the pit. Ethically... their only difference compared to old Norse communities is the abandonment of human sacrifice and the end of judgement through combat. The general mindset
I kind of wonder where those breakthrough in medicine came from, with the slavery still rampant throughout the state.
Slavery never had a major economic role in Vinland, most of the labor is from paid workers. It is more of a luxury for the upper classes, and with the industrialization it became even more marginal in the economy. Nevertheless, many of the recent breakthroughs in medicine across Vinland happened through brutal exploitation of thralls as test subjects.
What do our people believe in after we published the Book of Revelations? What is their stance on humanism, secularism, nationalism and other popular ideologies that are more common to 18th to 20th centuries than to 11th? Or was there not enough time to conceive them?
A sense of nationalism is slowly growing across Vinland, and their vision on religious matters is essentially similar to Viking Age Scandinavia, with a few differences. Superstition lost its place in most of society, yet the belief in the metaphysical remains as strong as ever, and the Book's most immediate consequence in the population was not of a religious, but of a racial nature, for its content bolstered the people with a sense of superiority only having 180 IQ and titanium bones can surpass.
Fortunately, while some daydreamers about equality exist, nothing resembling Marxism has been devised... yet. Nevertheless, if population grows too much, eventually the more serious problems of capitalism will begin, and then it will be only a matter of time for socialism to emerge as an ideology.
The dominant ideology in Vinland is
libertarianism classical liberalism, although there is not too much opposition to existing interventionist and state capitalist economic policies and the strongest political movement in Vinland at the moment is the one which yearns for emancipation, followed by a growing movement which desires a Constitution to enshrine freedom of speech. Some of the enlightenment ideals already do exist, but things developed in a quite different route, because there was never absolutism within Vinland in the first place, and a monarchy never existed either.
tl;dr Perhaps I need to stop using vault-co.blogspot.com, /gd/ and /pol/ as sources of inspiration.
