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TimePressure t1_jawsw5o wrote

Reply to comment by andyrocks in [OC] Argentina & Venezuela Produce More Cheese Than Switzerland by latinometrics

"just a state" with 4 times the area of Switzerland, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

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andyrocks t1_jawy635 wrote

Notably small countries. It is just a state.

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Shopped_For_Pleasure t1_jax0j4n wrote

Do you know what “state” means?

Do you know why we call them “United States” and not just “united provinces” or “united prefectures”?

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andyrocks t1_jax0yzg wrote

You know what we don't call them? Countries. Nobody calls them that. Do you know why? It's because they're fucking states, not countries.

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TimePressure t1_jax49sa wrote

Notably countries that are mentioned in this graph. Comparing Wisconsin to these does make much more sense than comparing the entire US.
Firstly, like in the named three countries, milk and cheese production has tradition and still is among the main agricultural product, which can't be said of the entire US.

Secondly, administrative levels are just that- somewhat arbitrary administrative levels. Someone else might be annoyed that you're not comparing the entire EU, or the Swiss canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden, which is famous for its cheese but has <17k inhabitants, or some obscure county of Wisconsin.

Political science notes that the words we use for administrative levels do not have strict definitions. "The State of Israel" is a sovereign nation-state, and nobody will bat an eye at calling Israel a country.
States do have governments with some sovereignity, but what is a state in one nation might be equivalent to an entire nation somewhere else, and equivalent to a county in the third.

In short: It does make sense to compare units with similar aspects. Be it an economic orientation, size, population, economic power, etc.
Administrative levels do not always mean the same thing or are beneficial to compare.

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