The Proun Republik (Balkan Confederation), or PRBC, is located on two small islands in the Dalmations in the Northern Adriatic Sea. It split from the Yugoslavian Republic at the same time as Slovenia, but no one really noticed. During the days of socialism, the area had housed several resort sites and colonies for state-supported artists. With the breakup of central government the ones living there at the time decided to strike out on their own and create the world's first country based on aesthetic lines.
The economy is highly artificial, since no one actually sells much. Enormous profits from money-laundering, online currency speculation and day-trading, and Internet porn and gambling sites are not taxed per se by the Proun authorities, but the fees charged for handling the money, infrastructure costs etc. amounts to a light taxation. There is also a healthy tourist-based sector, fuelled by tour groups of curious Sunday painters.
Many of the people who live in the PRBC are artists, both trained and untrained. A government stipend is paid to all authorized residents, like a Guaranteed Annual Income, but it's not much, so many of them have part-time jobs in the service sectors, or in the Proun civil service (since many of them are so glib and highly educated). A respectable number of them have independent means, usually from lucrative failed marriages. There are small numbers of people not connected with the arts who handle the PRBC's product-less industries, work full time in the service sector, or are peasants/fishers who keep the towns supplied with food and raw materials.
Although it's nominally a republic, there aren't many elections or "official" politics - things are too chaotic at the small-group level, with different factions of artists feuding all the time. The unspoken compact is that nobody bothers the businesses that allow the PRBC to exist, so in return, they don't try to run the country. The government itself is a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of semi-electeds and appointees trying to run the place part-time. The only real action is in the Ministry of Culture, which takes up a hefty portion of the state budget and funds various projects. Most of what's left goes into state stipends.
Therefore, the aesthetics of the country are made over on a near-mohtly basis. For example, right now the national anthem is a piece of musique concrete, consisting of a radio tuned randomly for 1 minute.
Somehow I got involved in this. I got an e-mail informing me that I am the Third Assistant Deputy Commissar in the Antistatic Section of the Ministry of Culture. I found I had been propelled into this post a week after the Pro-Deviationist Purge led by Heinmar "v. 1.9" Glock.
And so it goes...