The Pacific Alpine Commonwealth of Mount Seymour is a gargantuan, genial nation, ruled by Prime Minister Nathaniel Gardiner with a fair hand, and remarkable for its anti-smoking policies, smutty television, and restrictive gun laws. The compassionate, democratic, cheerful population of 17.611 billion Seymourians 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 government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked, socially-minded morass — juggles the competing demands of Education, Environment, and Welfare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Fort-Frédéric-sur-le-Montagne. The average income tax rate is 98.6%.

The enormous but underdeveloped Seymourian economy, worth a remarkable 1,319 trillion pounds a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is extremely specialized, is mostly made up of the Book Publishing industry, with significant contributions from Tourism. Average income is 74,945 pounds, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

The big red machine has ground to a halt, hidden bedroom-cams are installed to catch mothers doing their kids' homework, news headlines suggest that Prime Minister Nathaniel Gardiner has a sideline in guinea pig pimping, and in the Beginning was the Word and the Word was "Pragmatism". Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Mount Seymour's national animal is the purple-spotted newt, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Seymourian humanistic naturalism.

Mount Seymour is ranked 292,709^th in the world and 312^th in Forest for Largest Insurance Industry, scoring -26.42 on the Risk Expulsion Effectiveness Rating.