These comparisons come up all the time, and the issue is the Mercator projection makes Europe looks much larger than other countries on most maps. Much of Europe lies at a more extreme latitude than to the rest of the world. Basically nothing is at the same latitude in the Southern hemisphere and the only comparisons in the Northern hemisphere are Russia, Canada and Greenland. Other than Greenland, those countries don't generally get compared because they are gigantic in their own right, despite being much smaller than the appear on normal map projections.
A fun way to realize different country extends is this game where need to match moveable country shapes to their location on a mercator map: <a href="https://bramus.github.io/mercator-puzzle-redux/" rel="nofollow">https://bramus.github.io/mercator-puzzle-redux/</a>
Maps are hard. The world is 3D and maps are 2D and something is going to be distorted because of it, especially so if you want to show the entire world.<p>It's a case of "pick your poison" and maps tell us as much about the mind of the map maker as about geography, sometimes more.<p>So maps tend to display and emphasize what's "important" to the map maker, which means a lot of them exaggerate the size of developed countries and give short shrift to other countries.<p>For some cool insight into that, Google up maps of Oceania on YouTube. For example: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCsHWmAKCgQ">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCsHWmAKCgQ</a>
This poking fun at Mercator is starting to feel like tired meme at this point, especially when in reality alternative projections, like Winkel-Tripel popularized by natgeo, are plenty popular.
Fun fact if you add the size of North Korea 120,540km2 to the state I live in Queensland 1,852,642km2. The total size is 632km2 larger than Mexico's 1,972,550km2
Sometimes I'm not sure what the point of these Mercator criticisms are. GDP per land area is kind of more interesting, in that if you have a lot of land, but not much money, then there are probably a lot of desolate or lawless areas. <a href="https://ssz.fr/gdp/" rel="nofollow">https://ssz.fr/gdp/</a>
When I think of Mexico I think... Manifest Destiny. Come on for the 53rd State of the Union after Puerto Rico and D.C. It will decimate and solve the southern border illegal immigration problem. From there, we just continue moving south all the way to Antarctica, liberating the oppressed and taxing their income.
Maybe the US and Mexico should merge?<p>Would not be easy but could bring huge benefits, solve Drug violence, solve Southern Border problem and bring a massive reduction in Mexican poverty since it would unleash a tremendous wave of dynamism and growth.<p>Would also maintain US lead over China as the world’s dominant economy for much longer.
This is looking only at geography in simple land area terms. The reality of life for people in Mexico is that most of the population, around 80%, are concentrated in a horizontal band around Mexico City. Hydrology and soil conditions make a really big difference as well as access to ports. Mexico is still very big and has great influence, but not really so much in the way implied by this article.
Standardisation serves a purpose but having all globes and maps looking the same means people don't truly understand the Earth.<p>This is more than Mercator etc.<p>Turn a globe upside down. Turn it sideways. Try to think of it as ball of dirt in space rather than The Earth.