The Borderlands of Sympathy Mesa is a huge, genial nation, notable for its anti-smoking policies, punitive income tax rates, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, democratic population of 741 million Sympathy Mesans 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 enormous, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Education, Administration, and Healthcare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Halcyon. The average income tax rate is 80.0%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The strong Sympathy Mesan economy, worth 52.6 trillion souls a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is highly specialized, is mostly made up of the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Cheese Exports and Tourism. Average income is 71,002 souls, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

SM-SPAN viewership drops as MPs act their age, the government keeps introducing new foreign species to combat the previous ones it has introduced, captains must wait until all rats are safe before jumping ship, and old folks reminisce about the last time someone was acquitted of a crime. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Sympathy Mesa's national animal is the European polecat, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Sympathy Mesa is ranked 5,185^th in the world and 474^th in The North Pacific for Most Valuable International Artwork, with 81.88 Bank.