Permil

Because the population of NS nations grows so rapidly, it's inconvenient to assign a fixed number of people to a city, province, or army; a figure that is reasonable when first posted may be absurdly small a couple of months later. A permil is a standardized measure of population for NationStates. One permil denotes one thousand persons per million total inhabitants of the nation (or, alternatively, one million per billion); thus ten permils equal one percent of the population.

Functional land area can be measured in hectares (varying) or permils (constant). One permil, as a unit of functional land area, equals one thousand hectares per million national population. Functional land area thus expands to keep pace with population growth, a necessity when populations can increase by billions in a single year. For comparison, the current (2005) land area of the United States is approximately 3200 permil, of Australia 39 000, and Netherlands 230. As a measure of population density, one permil equals one thousand people per million hectares, therefore density = 1 000 000 / land area. The present population density of the United States is about 313 permil, Australia 26, and Netherlands 4350.

To keep the internal distances in nations from getting too large for effective government and communication, they are fixed and given in kilometers. Formal area (apparent size on a map) is given in square kilometers and is also fixed; thus, the number of hectares per square kilometer varies. The area in square kilometers should be one thousand times the area in permil, so that the number of hectares per square kilometer is equal to the number of millions of people in the nation. At a population of one hundred million, there are one hundred hectares per square kilometer, and the geometry is Euclidean (formal area=functional area).