The Republic of Hippowdon is a huge, efficient nation, remarkable for its smutty television, avant-garde cinema, and zero percent divorce rate. The hard-nosed, hard-working population of 622 million Hippowdonians are highly moralistic and fiercely conservative, in the sense that they tend to believe most things should be outlawed. People who have good jobs and work quietly at them are lauded; others are viewed with suspicion.

The medium-sized government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Education. The average income tax rate is 35.5%.

The powerhouse Hippowdonian economy, worth 57.0 trillion bronze nickels a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Arms Manufacturing industry, with significant contributions from Automobile Manufacturing, Information Technology, and Uranium Mining. State-owned companies are common. Average income is 91,626 bronze nickels, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 3.2 times as much as the poorest.

The most ambitious parents buy a dozen lottery scratch-cards each week for their kids, model railroad hobbyists have taken to muscling model shipbuilders off their "turf", vile black smog from coal power plants has enveloped several major urban centres, and fake designer clothes are shredded and burnt while many in the world don't have a shirt on their back. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Hippowdon's national animal is the rockwarbler, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation.

Hippowdon is ranked 56,689^th in the world and 655^th in Herta Space Station for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 132.62 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.