The United Socialist States of The Echos is a mammoth, orderly nation, renowned for its state-planned economy, irreverence towards religion, and devotion to social welfare. The compassionate, cynical population of 7.111 billion Echosians are ruled by a mostly-benevolent dictator, who grants the populace the freedom to live their own lives but watches carefully for anyone to slip up.

The enormous government juggles the competing demands of Education, Welfare, and Environment. The average income tax rate is 73.2%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The large but inefficient Echosian economy, worth 284 trillion Marxes 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 led by the Pizza Delivery industry, with major contributions from Door-to-door Insurance Sales, Book Publishing, and Tourism. Average income is 40,049 Marxes, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Nobody is allowed to stop the local daycare from reading Nietzsche to pre-schoolers, teenagers are told they're not thinking about sex enough, intelligence agencies frequently invite passers-by into their secret vaults for tea and biscuits, and the nation turns a blind eye to human rights abuses in its quest for athletic supremacy. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. The Echos's national animal is the Deer, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

The Echos is ranked 275,615^th in the world and 4^th in The First Fortress for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring -22.36 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.