The Republic of Sobea is a huge, safe nation, renowned for its state-planned economy, punitive income tax rates, and devotion to social welfare. The hard-nosed, democratic population of 416 million Sobeans love a good election, and the government gives them plenty of them. Universities tend to be full of students debating the merits of various civil and political rights, while businesses are tightly regulated and the wealthy viewed with suspicion.

The large government juggles the competing demands of Education, Law & Order, and Welfare. The average income tax rate is 60.3%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The sizeable but inefficient Sobean economy, worth 15.8 trillion guilders a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is quite specialized, is dominated by the Trout Farming industry, with significant contributions from Tourism, Retail, and Gambling. Average income is 37,881 guilders, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

The working classes live and die on the fields of the farming communes, birth announcements often also serve as death announcements, they say that Sobeans made a dessert and called it peace, and scientists recently cloned the long-extinct feather-bellied parrot. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Sobea's national animal is the parrot.

Sobea is ranked 105,444^th in the world and 3,682^nd in Osiris for Largest Gambling Industry, scoring 1,607.74 on the Kelly Criterion Productivity Index.