Location: Canada

Overview • People • Government • Economy • Trend • Analysis

The Confederacy of Keefenstein is a gargantuan, economically powerful nation, remarkable for its complete absence of social welfare. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, intelligent population of 11.348 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, pro-business government stops and the rest of society begins, but it juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Defence, and Education. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 60%. A powerhouse of a private sector is led by the Uranium Mining, Retail, and Arms Manufacturing industries.

Prisoners work-share to cut down rising costs of keeping them in jail, thousands of former welfare recipients are in a revolutionary uproar as the rest of society is enjoying a hefty tax break, the space program has been scrapped in order to focus on more terrestrial pursuits, and military funding has been stripped back. Crime -- especially youth-related -- is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Keefenstein's national animal is the polar bear, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its currency is the keefer.

Keefenstein is ranked 18th in Canada and 6,695th in the world for Largest Insurance Industry, scoring 5 on the Risk Expulsion Effectiveness Rating.

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NationStates by Max Barry, author of and