Location: Terroir

Overview • People • Government • Economy • Trend • Analysis

The People's Republic of Birchwater is a gargantuan, safe nation, ruled by Leader with a fair hand, and renowned for its complete lack of prisons. Its compassionate, intelligent population of 18.194 billion are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whoever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent, liberal government stops and the rest of society begins, but it juggles the competing demands of Education, the Environment, and Social Equality. It meets every day to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Birchwater City. The average income tax rate is 100%. The private sector is almost wholly made up of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, although the government is looking at stamping this out.

The recently unemployed can often be seen at the local homeless shelter, much of Birchwater's computer network is controlled by a rampant artificial intelligence, the government helps teach children how to kill a man from six paces, and citizens are expected to be proficient in at least five languages. Crime is totally unknown. Birchwater's national animal is the Black-capped Chickadee, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its currency is the flugle.

Birchwater is ranked 2nd in Terroir and 101,626th in the world for Largest Insurance Industry, scoring -30 on the Risk Expulsion Effectiveness Rating.

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NationStates by Max Barry, author of and