The Asteroid Mines of 21 Lutetia is a gargantuan, efficient nation, ruled by Sam Bell with a fair hand, and remarkable for its zero percent divorce rate, frequent executions, and daily referendums. The hard-nosed, hard-working, democratic, devout population of 21.897 billion Miners enjoy frequent elections, which are uniformly corrupted by big-spending corporations buying politicians who best suit their interests.

The minute, pro-business government, or what there is of one, juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Spirituality, and Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Goldschmidtfels. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 3.9%.

The all-consuming Mining economy, worth a remarkable 1,864 trillion chatters a year, is driven almost entirely by the private sector, which is fairly diversified and led by the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Retail, Gambling, and Door-to-door Insurance Sales. Average income is 85,160 chatters, but there is a vast disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 555,287 per year while the poor average 5,168, a ratio of 107 to 1.

Nervous homeowners have been blamed for rising death rates amongst carol singers and locksmiths, sales of fishnet stockings have reached a record high, small businesses are gobbled up almost daily by corporate giants, and it is illegal to liberate slaves. Crime is a problem, possibly because it is difficult to make it through a day without breaking one of the country's many regulations. 21 Lutetia's national animal is the tardigrade, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its national religion is profit.

21 Lutetia is ranked 135,330^th in the world and 1,531^st in the West Pacific for Most Corrupt Governments, with 4.94 kickbacks per hour.