Oh dear, I'm not trying to say you're wrong--yes, absolutely, Dragaeran society is stagnating on many levels. And I am the wrong person to try to explain this, because I haven't read any formal Marxist philosophy in fifteen years and I'm not myself a Marxist (though I am dating one, so I end up plunged into the occasional lunch conversations about things like the dissolution of the ISO and the problems with Hegelian dialectics--beyond that, the closest I come to Marxism is occasionally reading Brust's blog). I think Verra's "Societies develop and change, Vlad. There are inventions, and inventions have repercussions throughout society; associations among people grow and become different" is channeling historical materialist viewpoints, but I'm not gonna try to line it up with specific philosophical quotes because I'm pretty sure I'll just botch it.

I guess I'm just trying to say that from the Marxist point of view, all the forms of stagnation you're discussing stem from that one central stagnation: the economic/political one. Beyond that I think we mostly agree? The end of the Interregnum broke that (and now I'm itching to reread the Viscount of Adrilanka books for more details, because of course that's what it covers--incidentally, the whole Dragaerans-only-wear-the-colors-of-their-house thing is a major plot point in one of the Paarfi books), and the House in Vallista represents part of the progress that's come since.