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Comment by klapinat0r | Hacker News Reader

> It's as if someone talked about investing in the US, and someone felt obliged to blog about the differences between Illinois and New York and rural Idaho, Mississippi, Alabama and South Dakota.

This, exactly, seems to be the point OP is missing.

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It's all about scale. That is the point that almost everyone else is missing! The differences between New York and rural Idaho, in all, are smaller than the differences between Greece and Norway. They are however comparable to the differences between North and Southern Italy.

Scale

>It's all about scale. That is the point that almost everyone else is missing! The differences between New York and rural Idaho, in all, are smaller than the differences between Greece and Norway.

You'd be surprised.

Rural Idaho and New York have very little in common in buying preferences, business opportunities, employment opportunities, cost of living, potential market and such.

And New York and parts of Mississippi or South Dakota have even less. Would you base an startup on Holly Ridge or Indianola?

Heck, there are parts of South Dakota (the Indian reservations) that have a life expectancy of 48 years -- a third world like number.

Again, you force me to repeat myself. My point is that it's all about scale. There are surely big differences between NY and Idaho, but these are smaller than those between Norway and Greece (as an example). Greece and Norway have very little in common in ANYTHING, not only "buying preferences, business opportunities, cost of living, potential market and such". They are totally different countries. The huge difference between these countries was visible more than a 1000 years ago, when Varagians guards were employed by eastern roman empire / Bizamtium. In fact, part of the reason why the differences are bigger in europe is exactly because of the longer history of the countries, but that is a whole different subject. The point is, YES, there are differences between such states in the USA. NO, they are not as huge as those between countries in Europe. (Probably, but arguably, the fact that in Europe these countries exist for way longer than the USA, is a reason why the diversity between them is so strong)

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