The Commonwealth of New Brick City is a tiny, efficient nation, notable for its barren, inhospitable landscape, compulsory military service, and irreverence towards religion. The hard-nosed, hard-working, democratic population of 16 million Bricktonites 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 tiny, pro-business government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Education, and Spirituality. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 8.1%.

The thriving New Brick Cityian economy, worth 1.07 trillion Dollars a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Gambling industry, with major contributions from Basket Weaving, Automobile Manufacturing, and Furniture Restoration. Average income is 66,659 Dollars, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 214,547 per year while the poor average 15,681, a ratio of 13.7 to 1.

Economists confusingly list "fusarium rot and leaf blight" as major risk factors for monetary deflation, church and state are inseparable in their influence on education, the nation is automatically assumed to be the source of all unmarked weapons, and science centers and state of the art laboratories are ubiquitous. Crime is a problem, with the police force struggling against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. New Brick City's national animal is the Blue Jay, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to toxic air pollution.

New Brick City is ranked 178,124^th in the world and 114^th in Lesbian for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 64.03 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.