The United Socialist States of Span is a gargantuan, genial nation, ruled by M Shobacus Maz with a fair hand, and remarkable for its free-roaming dinosaurs, hatred of cheese, and punitive income tax rates. The compassionate, democratic, cheerful, devout population of 47.727 billion Spanners are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The medium-sized, liberal government juggles the competing demands of Education, Environment, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Maz. The average income tax rate is 96.7%.

The frighteningly efficient Spanner economy, worth an astonishing 14,741 trillion spannies a year, is highly specialized and mostly made up of the Book Publishing industry, with major contributions from Tourism and Information Technology. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is an amazing 308,863 spannies, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

A third of Spanners are e-certified CEOs, the wheel has been patented by at least a hundred people, jabbing a baby's bottle at officials gets parents waved straight through immigration, and every product goes through extensive safety-testing by the government. Crime is totally unknown. Span's national animal is the donkey, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Span is ranked 5,089^th in the world and 163^rd in The North Pacific for Most Advanced Public Transport, scoring 4,228.97 on the Societal Mobility Rating.