The Free Democracy of Ballo is a gargantuan, efficient nation, ruled by Ballotonia with an iron fist, and notable for its sprawling nuclear power plants, public floggings, and frequent executions. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, humorless population of 49.73 billion Balloans are kept under strict control by the oppressive government, which measures its success by the nation's GDP and refers to individual citizens as "human resources."

The large, corrupt, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Education, Industry, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Tulipolis. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 77.2%.

The frighteningly efficient Balloan economy, worth an astonishing 10,685 trillion Levs a year, is fairly diversified and mostly comprised of black market activity, especially in Information Technology, Woodchip Exports, Retail, and Uranium Mining. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is an amazing 214,876 Levs, but there is a large disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 919,526 per year while the poor average 32,189, a ratio of 28.6 to 1.

Teenagers claim that morning paper rounds are performance art, elementary school children develop thousand-yard stares, apples shaped like baguettes have become a strange new food fad, and windows in Tulipolis don't have much of a view. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Ballo's national animal is the Penguin, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to heavy metals seepage into national waterways, and its national religion is Atheism.

Ballo is ranked 312,587^th in the world and 2^nd in Netherlands for Safest, scoring 9.1 on the Bubble-Rapp Safety Rating.