Location: Avalon

Overview • People • Government • Economy • Trend • Analysis

The Lost Island of Shining Ys is a massive, safe nation, ruled by Queen Dahut with an even hand, and remarkable for its national health service. Its compassionate, intelligent population of 2.117 billion are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent, socially-minded government stops and the rest of society begins, but it juggles the competing demands of Education, Social Equality, and the Environment. It meets every day to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Ys. The average income tax rate is 97%. The private sector is almost wholly made up of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, although the government is looking at stamping this out.

The government is avowedly atheist, anti-environmentalist protesters are gunned down without mercy, welfare funding has recently gone through the roof, and every product goes through extensive safety-testing by the government. Crime is totally unknown. Shining Ys's national animal is the impossible bird, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its currency is the Lucky Silver Mark.

Shining Ys is ranked 45th in Avalon and 100,233rd in the world for Shortest Average Lifespan, scoring -42 on the Bus Surprisal Index.

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NationStates by Max Barry, author of and