Thank you for this well put post, however, I don't completely agree with this:

Quote Originally Posted by Sinth View Post

Can it be changed?
Short answer: No.
Long Answer: Technically, yes, but it would be extremely costly and time consuming. SE Would lose millions and it would take months to over a year to accomplish.
As others mentioned, they don't need to change the live-states in this scenario, they need to split up the data servers.

As someone else mentioned SE US headquarters are in LA. And Euro headquarters are in the UK AT MINIMUM, they could add some servers to each, to help split up the congestion/distance issue with having so many countries going to the same spot.

If you are going to do server live-sate, you have to split up those servers.