Musical Nation-States

So what if you decided to take all of the nations in the world and move their populations to the country whose rank in area matched its rank in population: Move the most populous country to the biggest one, and so on and so forth.

A few years ago, Frank Jacobs talked about such a map and posted it at Big Think. There are a few interesting features.

First of all, four countries wouldn't have to move. Ireland, Yemen, Brazil and the United States could stay right where they are, as their population rank matches their square mileage rank. Noam Chomsky would doubtless say that this is a result of U.S. imperialism and suggest we pay reparations to the Khmer Rouge, but Noam Chomsky thinks his bunions are the result of U.S. imperialism.

Some countries would no doubt like the switch. Iceland gets to leave its icy rock in the frozen North Atlantic and tuck into Luxembourg. The desert nation of Egypt probably freaks out over suddenly becoming the islands of Indonesia. India may like the extra room afforded by Canada, but those winters are going to take some adjusting.

And you can probably bet there's some Esperanto-speaking twerp somewhere who wishes there was some form of world government that could make this happen. Fortunately, wishes are not even horses -- they're just wishes. Even the dumb ones.