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Comment by Chris2048 | Hacker News Reader

Chris2048

> the UK, the ninth-richest country in the world

Is the UK a country?

Edit: this was rhetorical. It isn't a country!

What counts as a country varies depending on who you ask. You’re the first person I’ve seen suggest it isn’t a country, but plenty of people argue if it’s also two, three, or four countries.

(Depending on who you ask: Scotland is the least ambiguous, England is also a country, but Wales is sometimes a country and sometimes a principality of England, and NI is sometimes a region (either ‘occupied by the UK’ or ‘part of the UK’) and sometimes a country).

How do you figure that it's not a country? I upvoted when I thought it was a genuine question, but now I wonder what point you're trying to make.

FWIW, wikipedia says "The United Kingdom (UK),[15] officially the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and sometimes referred to as Britain,[note 10] is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland."

Note the words "sovereign country"

Maybe, but a sovereign country requires a centralized government. The government of Scotland has representation in Westminster, but I'm not sure to what extend this means there is only one government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Government

And a little further below, it says:

> The United Kingdom consists of four constituent countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

So, I guess the confusion is in having a country with countries inside. Personally, I don't know what's going on there.

To some degree, this is insanely ambiguous. I would argue in some respects that the EU's members are largely analogous to US states, for a variety of reasons. But the EU's members have the right to leave, maintain their own militaries, and have seats at the UN.

Whether or not a country is a country is inherently entirely determined by whether or not other countries agree it is a country, and any other distinction between what is and is not a country is largely meaningless.

Yes.

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