Incorporated State of Gulch

Only just recently founded in a secluded river valley by Ragnar Raul (titled Gulch Executive, and the majority shareholder in the government), the Incorporated State of Gulch follows absolutely the rule that no man shall initiate force or fraud, and receives many immigrants in search of such ideals.

Nevertheless, there are many nations that do not. Though Gulch will trade with free and relatively free nations, any nations in which the violations of liberty and property are too egregious are subject to the possibility of an embargo unless the government deems their rights situation one that will be improved by opening trade.

The government is run as a profitable entity, capitaled in the city of Mentis. User fees for regular law enforcement, contract enforcement, the few government roads, etc; along with profits from the various patents created by the government's research labs, fund all the government's ventures. Its departments include Research, Military (which operates those few government roads, built primarily for strategic purposes and only secondarily for commercial ones), Nonmilitary Foreign Affairs (limited to diplomacy and screening immigrants for criminal history or highly contagious diseases), Law Enforcement (which also administers the minimal state health system, which again only deals with highly contagious diseases), and Arts, which operates one museum of the nation's short history. It also operates a court system, with five justices on the Supreme Court, who may be replaced only for cause due to contract and who appoint the judges of the lower courts subject only to a rarely-used override power by Raul.

Each department except the courts and the Military ranks officials through seven numbers, the highest being 7 (for example, R-7 means a top research official, F-7 a top Nonmilitary Foreign Affairs official, 1s are entry level), along with the department head. Military, which is a unitary force, has no commission-enlisted dichotomy, ranks range from

M1: Recruit M2: Private M3: Private First Class M4: Corporal M5: Sergeant M6: Lieutenant M7: Captain M8: Major M9: Lt. Colonel M10: Colonel M11: Brigadier General M12: Major General M13: Lieutenant General (reserved for someone in command of a theater) M14: General (reserved for the Department Head, currently Nappe Dannes).

(NOTE: Section in progress) The military has 25,000 personnel active at any given time, 30,000 total due to troop rotation, and spends 60% of government revenues (or roughly 10% of GDP, though that varies due to the user-fee nature of such revenues). Roughly half are dedicated to support, including maintaining roughly 10 dedicated bombers, 35 fighter-bombers, 45 dedicated fighters, 125 multipurpose helicopters, 2 miniature aircraft carriers (capable of carrying roughly 5 planes and 2 helicopters each, and each always  accompanied when deployed by 1 destroyer, 4 corvettes, 5-anti-ship submarines. The carriers are typically rotated for patrol purposes in peacetime. An additional  destroyer, 8 corvettes, 1 amphibous assault ship, and 50 multipurpose submarines (10 large ones, the rest limited to a 10 man crew or so).  may be deployed at discretion The strengths of the military are in it's submarine capability and large number of surface-to-air deployments, defense being heavily emphasized. Troops are not trained for occupation of foreign nations, and any potential foreign ground operations are prepared for with an emphasis on quick damage and quick escape, thus, the  dedicated expeditionary force is limited to 800 men and several vehicles with an emphasis on speed, all such vehicles kept stocked with guns, explosives, incendiary devices, and stealth equipment.

Brand is little paid attention to as long as the equipment is proven to have satisfactory function, this saves some money.

Private schools commonly have students pay them with small-percentage shares in future earnings, this provides them a motive to ensure that those earnings will be large by providing quality education where it is needed.

Recently, an option has come into place to reduce immediate user fees by bequeathing estates to the government. This option is in common use.