Many Americans still burdened with constitutional rights

[james_davis_nicoll]

Using data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.

The government is assuming extraordinary powers to stop and search individuals within this zone. This is not just about the border: This " Constitution-Free Zone" includes most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas.

Is the claim that "nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders" correct? That would seem to require that the rest of the country contains slightly over 1/3rd of the population and since my incredibly untrustworthy eye thinks the first area is much smaller than the second, it implies even lower population densities than I expected for the interior regions.

Comments

[tceisele.livejournal.com]

Continental interiors in general tend to be unsuitable for comfortable human habitation. Once you get away from bodies of water, the temperature swings start getting unreasonable - further south, the bad patch is in the summer when it gets blisteringly hot, and as you go north it shifts to the bitter cold winters, with a nice stretch running along the US/Canada border where one conveniently gets *both*.

Sometimes I think the climate of the planet would be greatly improved if we dug kilometer-wide trenches north-to-south over the whole planet at intervals of about 10 kilometers, and filled them with water. Then everybody would get the benefits of a maritime climate, without having to crowd the seacoasts.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

That's an amazingly interesting idea from a science fiction perspective.

[geekosaur]

Enough so that it's been done... (Riverworld)

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Great healthcare, not so sure about the politics.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

No thank-you. I have tried living on the coast and I thought it perfectly atrocious. There was far too much moisture in the air, things went moldy far too easily because of this, and nasty arthropods abounded. What you like is far from universal. I live in a high, dry, and cold near desert because I like it.

[tceisele.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, and we probably wouldn't be able to trench the *entire* planet, anyway. But, given where the vast majority of people choose to live, I have to conclude that most people *would* prefer a climate with somewhat more moderate temperature swings, and a bit more rain.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

That contains a lot of dangerous assumptions. First it is rather like assuming that the vast majority of humans in ancient times preferred farming to hunting & gathering. Farming does support larger populations, but it isn't necessarily the better lifestyle from the individual point of view.

Likewise you are assuming that lots of inland seaways would have the same atractiveness or productivity of the natural coast. Instead of (possibly) making for climates rather like that of the area of the 'lake effect' that results in the cold and deeply snowy winters and hot and muggy summers of upstate New York.

And finally you might not know that many of the fastest growing counties in the US are in the dry interior states such as Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. The 5 fastest growing states are Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, and Georgia. Only one of those is a coastal state. I think a lot more people would like to live in the dry interior than currently live here due to history and technological/ecological limits.

[geekosaur]

Once you get away from bodies of water you have an even bigger problem: mass shipping becomes a lot harder and more expensive when you can't use ships. (Yep, it's called that for a reason.)

This is a really big part of why most of the population is in "coastal" areas (including the Great Lakes). Were I cynical about the US government, I would suspect they know this full well and it was a major part of their planning.

(and guess what, I am cynical.)