Jennifer Government is a novel published last year, which relates the story of one Hack Nike who lives in a satirical near future where American corporations own the world, except for holdouts like France, and organizations such as the police and the NRA are publicly traded. The employees of a corporation take the company name for their last name and you have to give out your credit card number before you can get an ambulance, which can be difficult if someone has shot you.

Anyway, the author of the book set up a free web-based game/simulation called NationStates where people can create their own country and decide on social, economic, environmental and other issues that face their nation on a daily basis. Want an ultra-libertarian/free market state? Crush the latest labor strike and get rid of all the drug laws. Want totally domination over your citizenry? Ban public protests and speech and install security cameras on every street corner. Like to be naked? Then forget banning public nudity laws and make nakedness compulsory!

Even better, you can join the U.N. and vote on issues that will affect all member states (be forewarned that the U.N. in NationStates usually approves anti-capitalist and pro-environmental regulations, just like in the real world). You can also join a region with other players, forming a community of countries who can elect a U.N. delegate (who gets more votes in the U.N.) and watch what the others do with their countries.

Of course, there are no winners; it’s only a simulation, thank goodness.

Here are my two countries (one of which Tim saw and commented, “Congratulations, you’re Norway.”)

Interested in joining a region? Then consider New Jefferson, home of HappyCorp, where the beer flows like wine, and the free market is the only god.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 26th, 2004 at 11:00 by Sho and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.