The linear plot in that Wolfram link is messed up. It doesn't show all the data (caps out at 800 billion GDP). Here's a corrected linear plot, from the script that I linked (commenting out the log-log scaling):

https://ibb.co/9bBgwH8

There is clearly a correlation, even on linear. It's a little messy, but it's undeniably there.

The starting point for this discussion was about the relationship between a country's size and population and it's power and influence. The correlation between area and GDP demonstrates that there is a meaningful relationship.

Btw, what is your specific complaint about a log-log plot? Country data points for area and GDP span many orders of magnitude, which makes it harder to visualize any patterns on a linear plot.

I also don't understand your point about the dispersion. The correlation and trend is pretty clear. No one said the correlation was 99%.

Edit: I've calculated Pearson's correlation coefficient for this data [1]. The result is 0.82, which indicates a strong positive correlation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_correlation_coefficien...