"Starting with the government," said Adam with the smooth flow of someone who had prepared every word that they were saying well in advance and without a single thought as to how their opponent might argue. "Things have descended into post-apocalyptic tribal warlordism. A cluster of competing chieftains engage in constant low-level warfare over control of resources but their authority is so weak they can hardly muster a hundred or so soldiers between them. Mechanisms for taxation are non-existent, leaving the - strangely large and bloated given the circumstances - civil service to subsist on occasional largess from the warlords and charitable donations. Speaking of donations, an entire parallel monastic society exists with its own hierarchy that further undermines even the limited authority of the warlords. Despite this state of anarchy, both the government and the church is incredibly interventionist and restrictive in both commercial and private matters."

"And that leads us in to the economy," the Machine continued, flow modeled on the speech patterns of the greatest gish-gallop politicos of its day. "Which is a shambles. Due to spectacular deflation and a gini coefficient nearing one, the economy is entirely uncapitalised. Worse than that, records keeping is primitive due to an irrational superstition about technology; almost all exchange is done on the basis of favours owed, and then these favours are forgotten, leading to vast and constant losses of wealth. Despite significant mechanization in agriculture and transportation, land consolidation has largely not taken place leading to the rise of a vast demographic of barely solvent subsistence farmers, whom accrue almost zero wealth over time due to their culture-bounded habit of donating most of their surplus to government or religious organizations. The population is tiny and also barely at replacement rate. Worst of all, property values are effectively zero. All of these things together represent an effectively zero-growth economy."

"Finally, technology," there was no variation in its flow, just a constant waterfall of words with no way to get a word in edgewise. "Basic technological education is worse than nil, children are actively indoctrinated into a luddite ideology where they must treat even basic conveniences with suspicion. The only innovations are done by a specialized caste of scavengers, who do not so much advance the sciences as pick over the ruins of more enlightened ages. Everywhere the wreckage of civilization-altering infrastructure is freely available and actively shunned by people, government and church organizations. And, shockingly, this state of affairs coexists with universal literacy and strong, if flawed, public education institutions. This all just serves to underline how deeply the anti-growth ideology has embedded itself."

"This world is impoverished," concluded the artificial intelligence. "Economic growth is at near zero levels, strangled by ideology, government red tape, lack of economic freedoms, statism and an absence of the rule of law. This world has more absolutist government than a totalitarian communist state, and is at the same time more disorganized than a pre-contact tribe of subsistence hunters."