Given how few people live year-round in Wyoming, but how many Californians own vacation ranches there, that actually might make sense.
The people who live within 500' of you do not have exclusive control over what happens in that 500' radius circle. Control is ceded to entities like your town, or county, or state, or federal government, in no particular way. The federal government controls, for example, what happens in the air above where you live; your state probably controls the building code for where you live; your town likely controls where you can take a dog for a walk or the intensity of outdoor lighting.
There's no smooth gradient of control dropping off as you get further from where you live. It's messy and it's complicated.
In addition, your stated view of who should have control also acts as a major barrier to people who do not live in a place from ever doing so. I suspect you may have no problem with that, but it's not technically "the American way" (aspirationally, anyway).
Perhaps I was a bit concise in my comment, but your attempt at rebuttal against some restrictions that you made up is unnecessary.
The danger with letting people far away from a place hold jurisdiction over that land is that it encourages bad actors. For example, if Wyoming were truly represented proportionally then resource extraction would be freer to damage the Wyoming environment. While true Californians (for example) visit often, there are many parts of the state unseen by tourists. Those who live there may witness environmental abuses or needs particular to that area that we do not. They should forward those to their representatives, who can represent their needs. If we truly represented them proportionally, profit-motivated companies and other bad actors would be freer to mutilate the Wyoming environment as the residents would have even less of a voice.
The problem with places like California and one of the reasons for massive polarization in the state is that Cali's government is too centralized. There are many Wyomings within California (and other large, populated states) that feel unrepresented. Bad actors ruin their environment, and they are powerless to do anything because they have representation proportional to the population.
Land, landscapes, environments, and ecosystems deserve representation as well.
In theory this would appear to be true. But in practice, the opposite seems more common in history. Wyoming's government is more beholden to its rich and powerful interests, and has less power to resist their beck and call. Consequently resource extraction interests are able to behave in ways that a federal government may not (and in many cases, does not) tolerate.
One of the central roles of government is to add balance to the struggle between the interests of the majority and the power of existing wealth. The smaller and more local the government, the less ability it has to add this balance. My county could not possibly effectively taken on a multinational corporation that was or planned to act in ways against our collective interests. In fact, even my state is having problems doing that right now (but it is certainly in a better position than the county).
In a world of gentleman farmers and homesteads, perhaps local governments would be enough to mount a steadfast defence of the interests of the many over those of the few. But we live in a world of gigantic and almost unimaginably powerful corporations, and local (even state) governments are not effective tools when we need to bend their behavior to our will.
The problem of people feeling unrepresented within the government does not go away by subdividing things down to smaller units and thus allowing the State of Jefferson etc. to exist. It might help, somewhat, but it would not eliminate it. When views on, for example, the correct response to a public health emergency (or even the actual existence of a public health emergency), become sufficiently polarized and divergent, different sides in such a scenario are always going to feel unrepresented by whatever action/inaction a government takes.
In addition, it is not clear to me that actively encouraging The Great Sort by creating politically-motivated jurisdictions is a great idea for the long run.
