Old Earth Empires
The Old Earth Empires, or nation-states, still exist on Earth and hold sizeable empires in the Galactic community around Earth. The largest of these empires include: United States of America, China, European Union, United Africa, Japan, Russia, and Brazil.
Earth itself is a heavily populated Core World teeming with giant cities and tens of billions of inhabitants. Despite colonization efforts to reduce overpopulation, many Earthlings prefer to stay. On Earth, lack of trade restrictions, open borders, easy global travel, convenient language translation, and homogenized governmental systems has led to the defacto abolition of national boundaries. National governments still exist, but the differences are much less prominent than they were 600 years ago.
Many of the Old Earth Empires have undertaken efforts to colonize the Frontier despite the long distances. The Federation welcomes such competition so long as disputes are resolved peacefully. In the event of hostile disputes, the Federation intercedes with military and diplomatic force.