The Protectorate of Yesterday is a titanic, efficient nation, remarkable for its pith helmet sales, complete lack of public education, and suspicion of poets. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless, devout population of 16.078 billion Yesterdayians are kept under strict control by the oppressive government, which measures its success by the nation's GDP and refers to individual citizens as "human resources."

The enormous, corrupt, moralistic, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Defense, and Spirituality. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 93.9%.

The frighteningly efficient Yesterdayian economy, worth a remarkable 3,430 trillion Guilders 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 an enormous, deeply entrenched, highly specialized black market in Arms Manufacturing, Uranium Mining, Furniture Restoration, 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 an amazing 213,357 Guilders, but there is a large disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 897,713 per year while the poor average 32,905, a ratio of 27.3 to 1.

Political activists are routinely executed, escaped birthday balloons are torpedoed out of the sky, the bayonet is cutting-edge technology, and remote-control hang-gliding scarecrows patrol the skies to keep songbirds from leaving the nation's borders. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force. Yesterday's national animal is the Lion, which is also the nation's favorite main course.

Yesterday is ranked 329,639^th in the world and 2^nd in Indie for Most Developed, scoring 40.88 on the Human Development Index.