The Democratic Republic of Communist Laos is a massive, socially progressive nation, renowned for its state-planned economy and stringent health and safety legislation. The cynical population of 2.18 billion Communist Laotians 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.

The large, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Defense, and Welfare. The average income tax rate is 44.8%, but much higher for the wealthy.

The sizeable but stagnant Communist Laotian economy, worth 20.6 trillion Lao kips a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. However, for those in the know, there is a slick, highly efficient, quite specialized black market in Trout Farming, Furniture Restoration, and Soda Sales. The private sector mostly consists of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, but the government is looking at stamping this out. Average income is 9,437 Lao kips, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Communist Laos's national animal is the elephant.

Communist Laos is ranked 170,174^th in the world and 5,562^nd in Lazarus for Most Primitive, scoring -65.19 on the Scary Big Number Scale.