The Province of Hardinan is a massive, environmentally stunning nation, remarkable for its ritual sacrifices, public floggings, and stringent health and safety legislation. The hard-nosed, cynical population of 2.276 billion Hardinanians are prohibited from doing almost everything except voting, which they do timidly and conservatively.

The large, corrupt, moralistic, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Defense, and Industry. The average income tax rate is 64.3%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The thriving Hardinanian economy, worth 192 trillion Provincial Talers 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 slick, highly efficient black market in Information Technology, Arms Manufacturing, Woodchip Exports, and Basket Weaving. 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 84,456 Provincial Talers, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 2.2 times as much as the poorest.

Getting an autograph has become harder than ever, beating enemies to death with a baseball bat is legal if done within nine innings, popular cartoon characters frequently appear in government-sponsored PSAs reminding students to say no to drugs, and Leader spends weekends doing the laundry of foreign leaders. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Hardinan's national animal is the Local Labrador, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Hardinan is ranked 50,077^th in the world and 5^th in Urcea for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 182.01 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.