The Banana Bread Provider of Erastide is a gargantuan, safe nation, ruled by Polgara with an even hand, and notable for its smutty television, restrictive gun laws, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, cheerful population of 45.938 billion Erastideans are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

The government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked, socially-minded morass — juggles the competing demands of Education, Environment, and Welfare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Kytum. The average income tax rate is 99.7%.

The enormous but sluggish Erastian economy, worth a remarkable 2,339 trillion ducats a year, is driven almost entirely by government activity. The industrial sector, which is extremely specialized, is mostly made up of the Book Publishing industry, with significant contributions from Information Technology. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is 50,933 ducats, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

The government has declared its commitment to multilateralism, the volume of paperwork used to complete a single environmental assessment defeats the purpose, children's TV shows are having a gay old time, and parents seeking custody have to write a five-thousand word analysis of their child's imaginary friend. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Erastide's national animal is the peacock, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Erastide is ranked 102,865^th in the world and 5^th in Lemuria for Most Subsidized Industry, scoring 1,371.55 on the Gilded Widget Scale.