The Most Excellent Empire of Picairn is a colossal, efficient nation, ruled by Emperor Menellia I with a fair hand, and renowned for its ubiquitous missile silos, complete lack of prisons, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, democratic, cheerful population of 9.152 billion Picairnians are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The medium-sized government juggles the competing demands of Education, Administration, and Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Stormridge. The average income tax rate is 98.2%.

The frighteningly efficient Picairnian economy, worth a remarkable 2,354 trillion Dollars a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Book Publishing, Tourism, and Arms Manufacturing. State-owned companies are common. Average income is an amazing 257,212 Dollars, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Welfare recipients are milking the government for all they've got, billions of Dollars are spent to take high-quality photos of the Phoenix Nebula, intellectual snobbery has the cognoscenti sneering at anyone who doesn't have an opinion on the semiological drift of Umberto Eco's works, and sniffer dogs check train passengers for body odour. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown. Picairn's national animal is the Phoenix, which soars majestically through the nation's famously clear skies, and its national religion is Secularism.

Picairn is ranked 281,126^th in the world and 5,963^rd in The North Pacific for Largest Automobile Manufacturing Sector, scoring -11.49 on the Henry Ford Productivity Index.