The State of Dantes Gate is a gargantuan, orderly nation, renowned for its compulsory military service and spontaneously combusting cars. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical population of 36.186 billion Dantes Gateans are rabid consumers, partly through choice and partly because the government tells them to and dissenters tend to vanish from their homes at night.

The medium-sized, pro-business, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Education, and Defense. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 21.2%.

The strong Dantes Gatean economy, worth a remarkable 1,356 trillion betales a year, is quite specialized and led by the Cheese Exports industry, with major contributions from Retail, Soda Sales, and Book Publishing. Average income is 37,494 betales, but there is a vast disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 254,917 per year while the poor average 2,014, a ratio of 126 to 1.

A large-scale revitalization of the education system is underway, the latest Harry Potter book is a bestseller, the alarmingly racist TV show 'Bigtopians Say the Darndest Things' is a hit, and political activists are routinely executed. Crime is a problem. Dantes Gate's national animal is the deer.

Dantes Gate is ranked 247,370^th in the world and 480^th in State for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 28.28 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.