Spotlight on:

“It Was a Dark and Stormy Night”

The People's Republic of Echolilia is a massive, environmentally stunning nation, ruled by Repetitious Leader with a fair hand, and renowned for its anti-smoking policies. Its compassionate, intelligent population of 1.022 billion are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whoever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent, corrupt, liberal government stops and the rest of society begins, but it juggles the competing demands of the Environment, Social Welfare, and Social Equality. 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.

Corporations are forbidden from employing outside the nation, scientists regularly clone human beings for research purposes, the roads are notorious throughout the region for their peril, and most of the nation's wealthy aristocrats are dentists. Crime -- especially youth-related -- is crippling, probably because of the country's utter lack of prisons. Echolilia's national animal is the octopus, which is also the nation's favorite main course, and its currency is the reiterata.

Echolilia is ranked 836th in the region and 53,787th in the world for Lowest Crime Rates.