The Republic of Casinopolis is a titanic, efficient nation, notable for its rum-swilling pirates, complete absence of social welfare, and spontaneously combusting cars. The hard-nosed, hard-working population of 16.384 billion Gamblers are either ruled by a sleek, efficient government or a conglomerate of multinational corporations; it's difficult to tell which.

The minute, pro-business government, or what there is of one, juggles the competing demands of Industry, Defense, and Public Transport. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 2.2%.

The all-consuming Casinopolitan economy, worth a remarkable 1,926 trillion chips a year, is driven almost entirely by the private sector, which is broadly diversified and led by the Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Retail, Gambling, and Soda Sales. Average income is an impressive 117,612 chips, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 409,804 per year while the poor average 24,575, a ratio of 16.7 to 1.

All new "spies" are fifteen-year-old acne-ridden kids on computers, university graduates and new home-owners toil in labour camps to work off their debts, it's rare to find an unchewed pencil, and young criminals are told they'll go to bed without supper if they do it again. Crime, especially youth-related, is all-pervasive, probably because of the absence of a police force. Casinopolis's national animal is the addict, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation.

Casinopolis is ranked 40,558^th in the world and 10^th in Union of Allied Planets for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 210.1 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.