The Crippling Instability of Bongo Mountain is a massive, efficient nation, ruled by Gerhard Popwell with an iron fist, and notable for its rum-swilling pirates, frequent executions, and public floggings. The compassionate, cynical population of 1.301 billion Bongolese 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 government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked, corrupt, socially-minded, well-organized morass — juggles the competing demands of Education, Healthcare, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Conghetto. The average income tax rate is 86.3%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The powerhouse Bongo Mountainian economy, worth 93.9 trillion Popwell pounds a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is highly specialized, is led by the Book Publishing industry, with significant contributions from Door-to-door Insurance Sales, Pizza Delivery, and Information Technology. Average income is 72,183 Popwell pounds, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Airplane passenger seat sizes and ticket prices are both first-class, bowls of milk left on windowsills please fairies and passing cats alike, families are left homeless as entire suburbs are bulldozed on the whim of tribal chiefs, and 3D printed organs are a breath of new life for the sick and elderly. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Bongo Mountain's national animal is the penguin, which frolics freely in the nation's sparkling oceans, and its national religion is Popwellism.

Bongo Mountain is ranked 28,585^th in the world and 1,282^nd in The North Pacific for Most Cultured, scoring 77 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.