The Colony of Mercala Trade Zone is a colossal, efficient nation, renowned for its barren, inhospitable landscape and complete absence of social welfare. The hard-nosed, hard-working, democratic, devout population of 7.121 billion Lubiarians are effectively ruled by a group of massive corporations, who run for political office and provide their well-off citizens with world-class goods and services. Their poorer citizens, however, are mostly starving to death while being urged to go out and get real jobs. The populace has reasonably extensive civil rights, although these are mostly aimed at allowing them to buy whatever they like.

The minute, pro-business government, or what there is of one, juggles the competing demands of Spirituality, Healthcare, and Law & Order. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 4.3%.

The very strong Mercala Trade Zonean economy, worth 505 trillion Luirs a year, is driven almost entirely by the private sector, which is broadly diversified and led by the Door-to-door Insurance Sales industry, with major contributions from Information Technology, Uranium Mining, and Soda Sales. Average income is 71,030 Luirs, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 234,316 per year while the poor average 16,114, a ratio of 14.5 to 1.

Citizens with artificial limbs are forbidden to serve as beauty pageant judges, members of the government all have oddly similar anecdotes about their childhoods, census workers struggle to account for the rapidly increasing number of citizens to tabulate, and children must be board certified to append "Jr" to their name. Crime, especially youth-related, is a problem, with the police force struggling against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. Mercala Trade Zone's national animal is the Lubiarian turtle, which can occasionally be seen avoiding garbage in the nation's murky oceans.

Mercala Trade Zone is ranked 269,495^th in the world and 2^nd in Tagwaran for Most Authoritarian, with 259.2 milliStalins.