The Colony of New Picon is a gargantuan, safe nation, ruled by Leader with an even hand, and notable for its keen interest in outer space, public floggings, and smutty television. The hard-nosed, hard-working population of 37.855 billion New Piconians are either ruled by a sleek, efficient government or a conglomerate of multinational corporations; it's difficult to tell which.

The tiny government is dominated by the Department of Law & Order, although Defense, Industry, and Public Transport are also considered important, while Social Policy and Welfare receive no funds. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Queenstown. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 5.0%.

The powerhouse New Piconian economy, worth a remarkable 3,107 trillion cubits a year, is driven almost entirely by the private sector, which is broadly diversified and led by the Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Pizza Delivery, Gambling, and Retail. Average income is 82,077 cubits, but there is a vast disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 561,452 per year while the poor average 4,328, a ratio of 129 to 1.

Nobody is allowed to stop the local daycare from reading Nietzsche to pre-schoolers, citizens are enjoying a recent large cut in taxes, there's a lot of smoke from the nation's "green economy", and proper policy proposals prerequire professional peer-reviewed papers. Crime, especially youth-related, is almost non-existent, thanks to a well-funded police force. New Picon's national animal is the panther, which can occasionally be seen sifting through garbage in the nation's cities.

New Picon is ranked 52,527^th in the world and 8^th in North Carolina for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 141.73 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.