Society in the Free Worlds League
The New Prosperity
The biggest boost for unity, however, stems from the League's robust economy. With money to be made at almost every venture, optimism is high from the palace on Atreus to the smallest town on the most distant Periphery border planet. Earlier and smaller economic boomlets tended to remain local, but the roaring economy of the 3050s and 3060s is bringing its benefits to almost every corner of the Free Worlds League.
Though the average League citizen credits the Captain-General with bringing this new prosperity, the decision that allowed it to happen sprang from external events. In 3051, with the Clan military juggernaut temporarily halted while the Clans chose a new war leader, the heads of the various Successor States held a summit on the world of Outreach. Summoned by the Clan-born mercenary unit Wolf's Dragoons, the Successor Lords spent several months hammering out a desperate plan to save the Inner Sphere from conquest. The battered armies whose realms had so far borne the brunt of the Clan assault could not hope to hold on without vast supplies of war materiel, which the Free Worlds League could most easily produce. It possessed a larger industrial base than the neighboring Capellan Confederation, and its worlds lay equally far from the Clan line of advance. Largely unscathed by the Clan War, the Free Worlds League was the only Successor State capable of resupplying the Inner Sphere's exhausted defenders.
In that year, however, little trust existed between the five Successor States. The simple recognition that they had a common enemy was a major breakthrough; actually joining together to fight the Clans seemed barely possible after nearly three centuries of mutual hatred. To persuade a reluctant Thomas Marik, Prince Hanse Davion of the Federated Commonwealth made him the one offer he could not refuse. In exchange for access to the bulk of the League's war production, Hanse offered treatment for Marik's terminally ill son at the New Avalon Institute of Science, the Inner Sphere's most renowned scientific and medical research facility. Marik agreed, over substantial misgivings that the massive export deal could run the League economy into the ground.
In fact, the arms deal sent the League's fortunes soaring. The Truce of Tukayyid in 3052, which temporarily halted the Clan advance, did nothing to slow demand, as the entire Inner Sphere stockpiled weapons and war machines against the day that truce expired.
After more than ten years of stepped-up production and no lack of willing buyers, the League economy shows no signs of slowing down. Its effects have spiraled far beyond military industries, as workers with higher wages seek avenues for spending them. Sleepy backwater worlds are transforming themselves seemingly overnight into engines for new commerce, or else are losing population to their more developed neighbors as the young and hopeful leave to find their fortunes. On more urbanized planets, the cities are jammed with people seeking opportunities. New businesses are launched almost every day, with three fledgling ventures springing up for every one that dies. New money is everywhere, from always-full tables at bustling cafés to the floors of planetary stock exchanges to rehabbed housing in once-blighted neighborhoods.
Overall, the mood of the people ranges from hopeful to outright giddy. Even many of those still left behind believe that sooner or later, the good times will reach them too. As the apparent author of the League's new golden age, Thomas Marik has the solid loyalty of every citizen touched by good fortune, and of most still waiting. That support from the common masses, more than anything else, holds the newly unified Free Worlds League together.
Not everyone, however, sees the boom times as an unmitigated good. On some worlds, lightly developed and moderately prosperous before the economic surge, local citizens fear unwelcome changes wrought by the new order. The flood of money and the rise of the new rich have already made a few such planets ripe targets for land speculators and unscrupulous developers eager to make a quick killing. Some residents complain of greedy newcomers disrupting the slow-paced lives they loved, turning small and close-knit communities into places where the only value is the M-bill.
Such feelings serve as a potential base for another class of opposition, those who see Thomas Marik's immense personal power as a betrayal of the very freedoms the League once stood for. These anti-centralization factions have sprung up on several of the planets that rejected the Internal Emergency Act of 3030, motivated by much the same reasons. They are so far most powerful on independent worlds like Camlann, with long histories of bowing to no higher authority than their own planetary government. The leaders of Camlann, first of the League worlds to attain independence from a larger authority, set the tone for most of those in the "planetary and provincial rights" camp. It is not Marik's policies per se they oppose, as much as his tightening grip on the reins of power. In their eyes, the most sacred right is the right to be left alone. Any increase in the power of the central government infringes on that right, and free citizens are obligated to resist it.
While the booming economy roars on, such sentiment remains scattered and muted. Most League citizens want nothing more than to revel in their new wealth, or earn some if they haven't already. As long as the good times continue, Thomas Marik and his successors should face little serious opposition. Only a major economic slowdown or other unexpected catastrophe is likely to derail this energetic nation's confident march into the future.