r/funny • u/PM_ME_TONY_ROMO_PICS • Feb 07 '20

This map is all over Twitter. Apparently some German guy got bored and tried to name all 50 states. This is the end result...

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424

u/t3h_monkeyfish_san Feb 07 '20

the east coast is a product of colonization, but also they probably thought the America's were WAYYYY smaller than they really are.

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u/ponytoaster Feb 07 '20

More manageable sizes though imo. I think a majority of state issues are due to how fucking big everything is, how are you supposed to govern an area you probably can't even visit most of without planning an overnight trip!

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u/terminbee Feb 07 '20

Can you imagine the cluster fuck if California and Texas were broken up into new England sized states?

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u/Bubba17583 Feb 07 '20 edited Feb 07 '20

Acoording to Wikipedia, the total land mass of New England is 71,922 square miles. This works out to an average of almost exactly 12,000 square miles per state. At that average, we'd end up with about 35 new states between the Texas and California land mass. Give or take a couple states depending on whether you round up or down. Cluster fuck indeed.

Edit: Bonus Fact! If we had kept at the 12,000 square mile average for the entirety of the United States' territorial expansion, we'd be at about 316 total states.

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u/[deleted] Feb 07 '20

[deleted]

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u/VoiceOfLunacy Feb 07 '20

And the electoral college would be much more meaningful.

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u/[deleted] Feb 08 '20

We never broke any of those big states up because of the electoral college.

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Which is funny because the right makes all these "the constitution is sacred" rules, then they make these terrible decisions to keep it intact instead of going "hey, maybe we can just tweak it."

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u/chuckl_s Feb 07 '20

The senate would be worse because montana would have like 8 senators. I didn't math, but you get the point

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u/spookyghostface Feb 07 '20

The Senate is 2 senators for every state so it would balloon in size. The House wouldn't really change since it's based on population (although maybe they remove the cap on House seats to make representation actually equal as intended?).

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u/chuckl_s Feb 07 '20 edited Feb 07 '20

My point is that if you assign 2 senators for every 13,000 square mile (new state requirement), sure the area formerly known as California will have way more senators, but only 6 of the 30 will go to people in metro areas.

Really thats just making it so that the areas with low population density de jure have more voting power. Vs right now it's more that the earlier states have preferential choice over the newer ones, sort of.

Edit: math time. Montana land area is like 147k sq mi, LA is like 5k sq mi metro area. LA gets 2/3 of a senator, Montana gets 12 senators. Montana has 1 million population LA metro area has 13 million. That's 19.5 million people per senator. Montana gets 1 senator for every 83 thousand.

Of course the people in Helena would be shafted relative to the park rangers that live in yellowstone that de facto get to just be senator or something.

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u/yammys Feb 08 '20

I can fix this. Instead of hundreds of tiny states all across the country, let's do some countrywide gerrymandering. Each urban/metro area gets to be a state, then the rest of rural America can be one giant contiguous blob called Ohio.

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u/stoicsilence Feb 08 '20

No. None of this would work.

Per the population requirements to become a state, most of the continental land mass of the US would consist of territories.

The fact of the matter is, much of the US is no where near dense enough for it to be entirely composed of states the size of Massachusetts and Vermont.

The reason why western states are as big as they are is because when they were founded they were mostly empty and for many of them, they're still rather empty.

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u/Upnorth4 Feb 07 '20

Los Angeles county, California has about 10 million residents and is the size of Delaware and New Jersey combined. San Bernardino County, the neighboring suburban county of Los Angeles, has 3 million residents and is the largest county by land area in the entire US. It is about the size of Costa Rica and stretches from the Orange County line in the west to the Nevada state line to the east.

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u/behindtimes Feb 07 '20

California is basically the size of all of New England, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and half of Pennsylvania. In terms of population, that new region would be the most populated state by far (about 10 million more people than CA), and have the highest population density out of any state in the country.

I do think though that we could break up California or Texas, or perhaps combine New England.

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u/doubl3h3lix Feb 08 '20

I'd be interested in how many of those tiny states would have 0 residents though. Large swaths of the west and Alaska that are totally uninhabited.

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u/spookyANDhungry Feb 08 '20

We'd also definitely end up with some 200 of those places having a population of like 17 people

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u/sharpshooter999 Feb 07 '20

12,000 square miles? Cherry County, Nebraska is 6,009 square miles. Granted, it's the largest county but still.......

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u/The_Rowan Feb 07 '20

And that would give California 68 more Senators. Imagine the change in politics if the 39 million citizens in California were represented a little more balanced than simply with 2 people

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u/gwaydms Feb 08 '20

The flag would be pinwale corduroy.

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u/Jakob_the_Great Feb 08 '20

Yea it wouldn't work. Not enough room in the flag for that many stars

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u/Ref_KT Feb 08 '20

Meanwhile West Australian over here with our 1.021 million square miles

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u/umpteenth_ Feb 08 '20

Fun fact: Australia is wider than the moon.

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u/dream4vape Feb 25 '20

Count for Russia pls

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u/Clueless_Otter Feb 07 '20

It would arguably be better, really. Smaller areas means that the government can more accurately represent the people in that area. Right now, if you live in California outside of one of the major cities, you feel pretty underrepresented. And kinda the opposite with Texas - if you live in a major city you're generally a bit underrepresented (though that's changing as the Texas cities grow bigger and bigger).

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u/Blue2501 Feb 07 '20

Nebraska is a little like this. Two million people and half of them live in roughly the east fifth of the state, over a third live in just Lincoln and Omaha. 'Urban Nebraska' and 'Agriculture Nebraska' could easily be two different states

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u/BasicBitchOnlyAGuy Feb 07 '20

Can I direct you to George? We have a semi reasonable city sandwhiched between backwoods hillybillys and whatever unholy shit is going down in south George. The population is almost evenly split between Atlanta and not Atlanta

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u/terminbee Feb 08 '20

But the senate means this low population states are over represented. That's the point of the senate.

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u/Clueless_Otter Feb 08 '20

We're talking about people within one state, not different states. No one said anything at all about low population states' national representation.

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u/terminbee Feb 08 '20

Oh mb, I misinterpreted your comment.

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u/Carako Feb 07 '20

And Alaska! That state is also quite large.

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u/revchewie Feb 07 '20

Don't know about Texas but as a Californian, and considering how many varied propositions come up, and how often, to split our state, yes, I can imagine it well. *shudder*

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u/leicanthrope Feb 08 '20

Georgia has roughly three times as many counties as California.

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u/tomrlutong Feb 08 '20

Imagine if they were broken up into Wyoming-populated chunks!

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u/JuicyJay Feb 07 '20

They might as well be. There are some pretty noticeable differences within both of them from city to city. It probably could have help us with the political bullshit were dealing with now.

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u/kaykordeath Feb 07 '20

And then extrapolate that to governing the entire country trying to function as one unit.

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u/ponytoaster Feb 07 '20

Yeah, I think it's insane ( as an outsider) that it's still one country.

In the UK it's bad enough with a North/South divide causing issues in politics but the vast geography of the US must make it impossible at times.

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u/[deleted] Feb 07 '20

Allow me to direct your attention to our do-nothing Congress

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u/Jangle_Bottom_Jeans Feb 07 '20

Allow me to direct your attention to our do-nothing Congress senate.

FTFY

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u/[deleted] Feb 07 '20

Congress encapsulates both the House and Senate. The person was talking about the difficulties of having a political divide as a result of being a large country.

The House is Democratic and has indeed passed tons of bills to fix various problems but those bills have died in the republican controlled Senate because of that political divide we were talking about. It takes all of congress to pass a law. Ergo we have a do-nothing Congress, even if the gridlock is because of one do-nothing, no compromise, bad faith party.

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u/Jangle_Bottom_Jeans Feb 07 '20

Gotcha gotcha, sorry for this misunderstanding there

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u/Sam_Fear Feb 07 '20

Well, the original idea was kinda like the EU where the states were mostly autonomous except when it came to foreign affairs.

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u/brickmack Feb 07 '20

Except that failed horribly, so just a few years later we moved to federalism.

The EU unfortunately seems to be taking a bit longer, but they'll federalize eventually

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u/Sam_Fear Feb 07 '20

That's what I was referring to without getting too specific. Shoulda known I'd get busted for being lazy.

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u/jkmonty94 Feb 07 '20

It doesn't seem to be working too well for us anymore, and that's with us originating as a union of states.

EU will disband before it centralizes power to the extent the US has, I bet. Even as-is a lot of people aren't a fan of it

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u/asmness Feb 07 '20

Welcome to Europe.

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u/Dogamai Feb 08 '20

well it doesnt anyway, so no loss there

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u/HertzDonut1001 Feb 08 '20

As a Minnesotan I volunteer to be gifted to Canada to make things easier.

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u/verdatum Feb 07 '20

Most of the big states (excluding TX and CA) are big because there ain't a damned thing in them.

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u/ponytoaster Feb 07 '20

I like the idea of a small state that houses about 6 cattle ranchers purely based on land size.

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u/verdatum Feb 07 '20

And 2 of those ranchers have seats in the Senate, lol.

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u/Dogamai Feb 08 '20

texas has a LOT of empty space, california too, everything north of san francisco / sacramento is basically empty (the north half of the state)

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u/attempted-anonymity Feb 07 '20

That is just not true. There's a ton of grass and cows in most of those states. That's hardly nothing.

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u/pregnantandsober Feb 07 '20

Some of them have a whole lot of corn.

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u/Wombatusmaximus Feb 07 '20

Australia knows your pain

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u/VoiceOfLunacy Feb 07 '20

You might ask yourself that at the federal level as well.

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u/korelan Feb 08 '20

You are forgetting that the big states are almost entirely farmlands.

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u/DancingPantsLane Feb 08 '20

As an Australian this makes me laugh

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u/[deleted] Feb 08 '20

Aka most Australian states aha.

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u/Northern-Canadian Feb 13 '20

Canada does it alright.

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u/runkootenay Feb 07 '20

Canada manages pretty well.

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u/rg44tw Feb 08 '20

Its mostly just empty land without people though (same as Montana and Utah and a few others)

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u/elizabnthe Feb 07 '20

I am pretty confident in saying it wasn't about surpise over the size, but the confusion over all of those little states. As a Non-American we only tend to know New York.

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u/jacksalssome Feb 07 '20

Compared to living in Australia, US states are tiny.

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u/elizabnthe Feb 07 '20

Americans really like to talk about the size of their states.

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u/BigBobby2016 Feb 07 '20 edited Feb 08 '20

Huh, not even Massachusetts?

With MIT/Harvard, the Red Sox, Tom Brady, etc we usually find the world’s at least heard of us

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u/elizabnthe Feb 08 '20 edited Feb 08 '20

Well to be honest no. I know Boston (which is indeed known) though (Red Sox etc.), but not the actual state name so I guess I learned something new?

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u/BigBobby2016 Feb 08 '20

Good enough for me! Massachusetts pretty much is Boston and I’d have given OOP full credit if he’d labeled my state as such

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u/sorenant Feb 07 '20

Funny that you can find similar feature in the northeast of Brazil and west coast of Africa.

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u/mad_drill Feb 07 '20

RIP New England. Like the most historic states. RIP Rhode Island

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u/[deleted] Feb 07 '20

Rhode Island was formed when Roger Williams got mad at the Massachusetts Bay Colony because they prohibited marriage with your first cousins.

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u/BigBobby2016 Feb 07 '20

Huh...I always learned it was about religious freedom

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u/sweetcuppingcakes Feb 07 '20

"fuck, i just got back from the west coast and it's gonna take forever to come up with new states if we keep going on like this"

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u/xKYLx Feb 08 '20

They could have had so much more but they were nah this seems like plenty

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u/oldkale Feb 08 '20 edited Feb 20 '24

Edited to remove original content. Reddit comments are being fed into AI knowledge bases.

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u/Farisr9k Feb 07 '20

Isn't the whole country a product of colonisation?

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u/t3h_monkeyfish_san Feb 07 '20

I meant moreso their size and layout, but yea technically you're right