The Territorial Area of Greatbriar is a massive, genial nation, ruled by The Voice with an iron fist, and remarkable for its keen interest in outer space, punitive income tax rates, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, cynical, devout population of 2.168 billion Greatbriarians are ruled without fear or favor by a psychotic dictator, who outlaws just about everything and refers to the populace as "my little playthings."

The medium-sized, corrupt, moralistic, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Administration, and Defense. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Burning Bush. The average income tax rate is 58.6%.

The thriving Greatbriarian economy, worth 199 trillion Efforts 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 a large, well-organized, fairly diversified black market in Trout Farming, Tourism, Arms Manufacturing, and Information Technology. 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 91,843 Efforts, with the richest citizens earning 5.2 times as much as the poorest.

Clerics are taught that silence is golden and duct tape is silver, sales of pregnancy testing kits are booming, the government insists that a ghost voted ten million times in the last election, and local officials love to claim the protection of their Big Brother. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Greatbriar's national animal is the Cow, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Catholicism.

Greatbriar is ranked 75,800^th in the world and 1^st in Sands for Most Developed, scoring 68.55 on the Human Development Index.