Conglomeration of Entities or United States of America — Which One Will It Be?

What is a conglomerate or conglomeration? Oxford Dictionary defines Conglomerates as “a number of different things or parts that are put or grouped together to form a whole but remain distinct entities.[1] Typically, this term is used for companies like Facebook and Amazon. For example, Facebook began at Harvard University in 2003 as Facemash, an online service for students to judge the attractiveness of their fellow students.[2] Jeff Bezos quit his job at an investment bank in 1994 to open a virtual bookstore, working out of his garage with a handful of employees, sold its first book in 1995[3] and today is called Amazon, “The Everything Store.”

The Cambridge Dictionary explains a conglomeration this way: a large group or mass of different things all collected together in a messy or unusual way.[4] For purposes of this essay, the Cambridge definition provides one of the best explanations for a conglomeration in terms of how the United States of America as a country could be considered. What started out as one colony turned into thirteen different things all collected together in a rather messy way: by theft of land from the indigenous people either through violence or coercion or both. Just like Cambridge, Oxford’s definition offers one of the best explanations as well, since each state can be considered a…