The Community of Ravinge is a tiny, environmentally stunning nation, renowned for its state-planned economy, ban on automobiles, and devotion to social welfare. The compassionate, democratic population of 16 million Ravingeans 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 large, liberal, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Welfare, Education, and Administration. The average income tax rate is 56.2%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The struggling Ravingean economy, worth 297 billion dollars 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 Pizza Delivery, Trout Farming, Tourism, and Cheese Exports. 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 18,618 dollars, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

The government supplies ragtag bands of resistance fighters in exchange for vague promises of future payment, school lessons are constantly interrupted by 'teacher needs a break' time, geosynchronous satellites are now manned by unpaid interns, and teams of painters are converting road signs from horse lengths to kilometers. Crime is totally unknown. Ravinge's national animal is the rainwing, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Ravinge is ranked 111,185^th in the world and 1,696^th in the South Pacific for Largest Governments, scoring 15.49 on the Bureaucratic Comprehensiveness Rating Scale Index.