Location: Wysteria

Overview • People • Government • Economy • Trend • Analysis

The Sleepy Floaty Isles of Dienes is a gargantuan, cultured nation, ruled by a lonely baker with a fair hand, and notable for its complete absence of social welfare. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, intelligent population of 16.481 billion are effectively ruled by a group of massive corporations, who run for political office and provide their well-off citizens with world-class goods and services. Their poorer citizens, however, are mostly starving to death while being urged to go out and get real jobs. The populace has reasonably extensive civil rights, although these are mostly aimed at allowing them to buy whatever they like.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent, corrupt, pro-business government stops and the rest of society begins, but it is mainly concerned with Education, although Commerce and the Environment are secondary priorities. It meets every day to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Hope. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 18%. A powerhouse of a private sector is led by the Book Publishing industry, followed by Tourism and Gambling.

Homeless people are frequently charged with trespassing on public property, almost half of the child population live rough on the streets, citizens who leave the country are officially classed as traitors, and several citizens have complained about scientists abducting their pets for experimentation. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Dienes's national animal is the Teddy Bear, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, its national religion is watermelon juggling, and its currency is the Unicycle.

Dienes is ranked 16th in Wysteria and 88th in the world for Largest Insurance Industry, scoring 25 on the Risk Expulsion Effectiveness Rating.

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NationStates by Max Barry, author of and