Location: Nederland

Overview • People • Government • Economy • Trend • Analysis

The Tranquility of Toulouse-Lautrec is a gargantuan, genial nation, ruled by Henri Marie Raymond with an iron fist, and notable for its anti-smoking policies. Its compassionate, cynical population of 21.465 billion are ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship government, which ensures that no-one outside the party gets too rich. In their personal lives, however, citizens are relatively unoppressed; it remains to be seen whether this is because the government genuinely cares about its people, or if it hasn't gotten around to stamping out civil rights yet.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent, corrupt, socially-minded government stops and the rest of society begins, but it juggles the competing demands of Commerce, Healthcare, and Social Welfare. It meets every day to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Montmartre. The average income tax rate is 71%, and even higher for the wealthy. 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.

Married couples must call each other "darling" or risk a fine, the mining industry is making inroads into environmentally sensitive areas, the government awards prizes to television shows featuring stereotype-breaking minority roles, and a well-funded social safety net protects the unfortunate. Crime is totally unknown. Toulouse-Lautrec's national animal is the lion, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, its national religion is Atheism, and its currency is the euro.

Toulouse-Lautrec is ranked 18th in Nederland and 14,327th in the world for Most Extreme, scoring 29 on the Paul-Nader Subjective Decentrality Index.

NationStates by Max Barry, author of and