The Republic of Miss Appear is a mammoth, efficient nation, ruled by The Chief with an even hand, and remarkable for its public floggings, frequent executions, and suspicion of poets. The hard-nosed, hard-working population of 6.556 billion Appearians are highly moralistic and fiercely conservative, in the sense that they tend to believe most things should be outlawed. People who have good jobs and work quietly at them are lauded; others are viewed with suspicion.

The medium-sized, moralistic government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Defense, and Education. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Bikini Bottom. The average income tax rate is 33.2%.

The very strong Appearian economy, worth 383 trillion Dollars a year, is led by the Beef-Based Agriculture industry, with major contributions from Tourism, Book Publishing, and Furniture Restoration. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is 58,452 Dollars, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 3.2 times as much as the poorest.

Undergrads find their professors' mushroom experiments less psychedelic than expected, advertisements for jobs in the sciences run in fashion magazines, broken suspension systems are giving auto repair shops plenty of business, and houses and businesses are bulldozed to make way for ever-expanding cemeteries. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Miss Appear's national animal is the Clam, which frolics freely in the nation's sparkling oceans, and its national religion is Justice.

Miss Appear is ranked 118,335^th in the world and 2^nd in Houston for Largest Populations, with 6.56 billion capita.