Location: Capitalist Paradise

Overview • People • Government • Economy • Trend • Analysis

The Allied States of Reed Audio is a colossal, environmentally stunning nation, ruled by John Adams with a fair hand, and notable for its suspicion of poets. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, intelligent population of 9.073 billion are effectively ruled by a group of massive corporations, who run for political office and provide their well-off citizens with world-class goods and services. Their poorer citizens, however, are mostly starving to death while being urged to go out and get real jobs. The populace has reasonably extensive civil rights, although these are mostly aimed at allowing them to buy whatever they like.

There is no government in the normal sense of the word; however, a small group of community-minded, pro-business individuals juggles the competing demands of the Environment, Law & Order, and Defence. Income tax is unheard of. A powerhouse of a private sector is dominated by the Soda Sales industry.

Manual labourers must be willing to have cybernetic limbs to get a job, corporations donate huge sums of money to favored politicians, legislators work 24/7 due to an influx of single-issue bills, and organised sports are frowned upon as frivolous. Crime -- especially youth-related -- is crippling. Reed Audio's national animal is the whale, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its currency is the silver.

Reed Audio is ranked 271st in Capitalist Paradise and 94,350th in the world for Most Compassionate Citizens, scoring -290 on the Kitten Softness Rating.

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NationStates by Max Barry, author of and