"You didn't build that" - Obama

[Aielyn]

Kasz216 said:

Aielyn said:

And I'm sorry, but the statistical difference between 5 million and 300 million is miniscule, it makes little difference to the overall behaviour. And I really don't see what ethnicity has to do with the ability for people to get along... unless you're claiming that America is inherently racist. Also, Norway has a significant immigrant population, with the current count working out to over 13% of the population. Also worth noting is that I'm not saying that Norway has it perfect, or that America should imitate Norway in everything... but perhaps America could get off its damn high horse for a few seconds, and look at where other countries are outperforming them? You know, try to improve your country by taking the best and most effective policies from other countries?

I feel like you've never taken a course in statistics.

The differnece between 5 million and 300 million isn't significant when measuring individual behavior of a representative population.

Australia is NOT a represenative population of America.

 

5 million to 300 million IS statistically different in orginizational statistics.... as is the pure size of the US compaired to say... Australia, because it requires far more layers of beuracracy and the larger a workforce gets away from Dunbar's number, the less efficent it becomes.   (and society for that matter.)

I'd suggest readings into Orginzational Psychology and Orginzational Sociology for more information on why it's easier to work systems on a small group, rather then a large one.

I actually do suck at statistics, but my use of "statistical difference" wasn't intended to actually be a statement of statistical comparison. What I was saying was that, while the difference between 5 people and 300 people is a dramatic difference as far as how things are run is concerned, the difference between 5 million and 300 million is negligible - that is, the difficulty in running a country of 5 million and a country of 300 million are comparable. And I'm guessing you've fallen for the same problem as most Americans, thinking Australia is tiny. Australia isn't 5 million, it's much closer to 25 million. And while it's not representative of America, it is comparable because of similar culture (not same, but similar), similar levels of multiculturalism, similar nation size, and similar concerns with regard to indigenous people. Of all of the other countries in the world, Australia is probably the one with the greatest number of similarities with America (likely closely followed by Canada, who are even more similar to Australia).

As for Dunbar's number, you've again proven my point, really. Dunbar's number is around 150. Compared to 150, 5 million and 300 million are very similar numbers. The best way to demonstrate this is using a logarithmic scale. Let's use base 10.

log(150) = 2.18
log(5000000) = 6.7
log(300000000) = 8.48

There's a much bigger difference between 150 and the others than there is between 5 million and 300 million. And in fact, I'd argue that Dunbar's number is a good way to get a sense of how the heirarchy of democracy should work - each scale should be of the order of 150, with roughly three layers in a country of 5 million and roughly four layers in a country of 300 million.

Also, if America's biggest problem is that it's too big... well then, split into a number of smaller nations already. Either the US is a "great nation" and the scale isn't a problem, and thus the government should be big, or the US is a failed experiment to begin with, and you need to split out into a number of smaller countries.

If I may offer a possibility...
Group together California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington for about 52 million
Group together Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana for about 50 million
Group together Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, DC, and New Jersey for about 61 million
Group together Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida for about 64 million
Group together Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana for about 32 million
Group together Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah for about 49 million...
Let Alaska and Hawaii choose if they want to be part of one of those, or be part of Canada or be independent nations.

Mind you, the main reason I do this is to emphasise that you could do it, and you could begin each new nation with a temporary adapted version of your current constitution, to last until each nation has created its own. And if you still want to feel part of a united group, then feel free to have a North American Union... Canada might be more interested in joining such a system, with the other states being much closer to their own size.

The other reason I do it is to mock the double-talk.