The Democratic Republic of Novum Zero is a huge, socially progressive nation, notable for its rum-swilling pirates, daily referendums, and devotion to social welfare. The compassionate, democratic population of 908 million Novum Zeroans are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The medium-sized, liberal government juggles the competing demands of Education, Welfare, and Healthcare. The average income tax rate is 48.7%, but much higher for the wealthy.

The thriving Novum Zeroan economy, worth 68.0 trillion potatoes a year, is dominated by the Tourism industry, with significant contributions from Book Publishing, Pizza Delivery, and Retail. Average income is 74,924 potatoes, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Funerals are often rudely interrupted by juggling clowns shouting for volunteers from the audience, the nightly news reports prosaically on the government blindly throwing money at despotic kidnappers, facial disfigurement is a leading cause of supervillainy, and one tree's worth of paperwork accompanies each imported log of timber. Crime is relatively low. Novum Zero's national animal is the spoingus, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Novum Zero is ranked 273,775^th in the world and 12^th in Transatlantic Pirates for Largest Black Market, with 58.3 billion Standard Monetary Units.