The Despotic Dictatorship of Despoticania is a gargantuan, cultured nation, ruled by The Despot with an iron fist, and remarkable for its ubiquitous missile silos, free-roaming dinosaurs, and stringent health and safety legislation. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 35.287 billion Despoticanians 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 relatively small, corrupt, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Education, Defense, and Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Despoticania Prime. The income tax rate is 100%.

The frighteningly efficient Despoticanian economy, worth an astonishing 40,932 trillion Despollars 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 an enormous, deeply entrenched, broadly diversified black market in Information Technology, Arms Manufacturing, Retail, and Book Publishing. 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 a breathtaking 1,159,996 Despollars, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Policemen regularly conduct midnight raids on closed donut shops to 'collect evidence', holidaymakers sleep curled up on the floor as hotel beds are replaced with oversized bookcases, there's sophisticated talk of revolution within the ever-expanding mining colonies, and phone taps are frequently carried out by the police. Crime is totally unknown. Despoticania's national animal is the Winged Unicorn Pig, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its national religion is Church of Transcendental Hatred.

Despoticania is ranked 13^th in the world and 2^nd in The Alliance of Dictators for Largest Furniture Restoration Industry, scoring 41,077.73 on the Spitz-Pollish Productivity Index.