Free Market Block
The Free Market Block was one of two major polar power factions on Earth during the 21st Century, with the other being the Eurasian Soviet, and each created by its member-states to counter-balance the power of the other. Initially created in 1992 as a supranational union of the United States of America, Canada, and Mexico, during the period leading up to the Third World War the block eventually conquered the entirety of the Americas, through a series of political movements, foreign-funded coups d'etat, and outright warfare.
In order to contrast itself sharply with the Eurasian Soviet, the Free Market Block promoted itself as, and enacted laws to support, the platonic ideal of a libretarian state. In actual practice, however, an increasingly radical reactionary element dragged the politics strongly to the right, and even as early as 1998, rhetoricians in other countries (such as the members of the Oceanic Econo-Political Union) saw both of the polar powers as equally extreme, authoritarian regimes. In addition to spurring the creation of moderate blocs like the United States of Western Europe and African Confederation, tension and accelerationist factions in the Free Market Block and Eurasian Soviet are commonly cited as primary factors in the cause of the Third World War.
The Free Market Block became a minority element during the war in what was eventually known as the Western Sphere Hegemony, and in spite of its citizens reluctance was eventually absorbed into the Hegemony completely. After the conclusion of the war, by 2044, it was revealed that the Defense Research Initiative, a military-industrial complex agency similar to the Special Research Force in the OPEU, had engaged in unethical medical experimenation around prisoners, POWs, and other human captives known as Project Opus. Among the spin-off technologies from this research were the creation of the Neural Prosthesis Paradigm and the highly-illegal Lorica-N Cockpits and related technologies. Backlash against these revelations was one of the contributing factors in the breakup of the Free Market Block and a general shift of Western Sphere Hegemony politics to center-left attitudes overall.
The legacy of the Free Market Block did not die with it, however, and during the 22nd Century's Mars Conflict, political and economic policies first espoused by scholars within the Free Market Block were a contributing factor in the internal rebellion that destroyed the Martian Soviet and created the Martian Co-Prosperity Sphere, an impact felt to this day.