The Empire of Trendsetter is a gargantuan, efficient nation, ruled by The Trendsetting Trendsetter with an even hand, and renowned for its smutty television, enslaved workforce, and parental licensing program. The hard-nosed, hard-working, humorless, devout population of 18.706 billion Trendsetterians are highly moralistic and fiercely conservative, in the sense that they tend to believe most things should be outlawed. People who have good jobs and work quietly at them are lauded; others are viewed with suspicion.

The enormous, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Education, Administration, and Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Trendsetting Place. The average income tax rate is 97.7%.

The frighteningly efficient Trendsetterian economy, worth a remarkable 5,635 trillion Status Quos a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. However, for those in the know, there is an enormous, deeply entrenched, fairly diversified black market in Uranium Mining, Basket Weaving, Arms Manufacturing, and Woodchip Exports. The private sector mostly consists of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, but the government is looking at stamping this out. Average income is an amazing 301,254 Status Quos, but there is an enormous disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 1,638,531 per year while the poor average 28,476, a ratio of 57.5 to 1.

Most of the nation's wealthy aristocrats are dentists, Air Trendsetter tickets have reached sky-high prices due to a complete monopoly on air travel, a typical peasant's life cycle leads from birth to the gallows, and garbage bags floating down the river are churned up by man-made rapids. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Trendsetter's national animal is the Trend, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its national religion is Trender.

Trendsetter is ranked 8,810^th in the world and 1^st in Trendsetter for Lowest Crime Rates, with 103.43 law-abiding acts per hour.