Spotlight on:

“The right to vote will not fill your stomache.”

The Benevolent Dictatorship of Laerod is a gargantuan, safe nation, renowned for its museums and concert halls. Its compassionate, cynical population of 11.081 billion are ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship government, which ensures that no-one outside the party gets too rich. In their personal lives, however, citizens are relatively unoppressed; it remains to be seen whether this is because the government genuinely cares about its people, or if it hasn't gotten around to stamping out civil rights yet.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent, corrupt government stops and the rest of society begins, but it juggles the competing demands of Education, Social Welfare, and the Environment. The average income tax rate is 100%. The private sector is almost wholly made up of enterprising fourteen-year-old boys selling lemonade on the sidewalk, although the government is looking at stamping this out.

An increasing percentage of the population's youth have homosexual parents, schools have extensive counseling programs for troubled students, the nation has welcomed its expats back with open arms, and the wearing and manufacture of fur apparel is banned. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Laerod's national animal is the raven, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its currency is the tarad.

Laerod is ranked 166th in the region and 1,867th in the world for Highest Unemployment Rates.