AWG, or American Wire Gauge, is a logarithmic stepped gauge system that originated in t857 as single-strand measuring gauges. The higher the gauge number, the smaller the wire, as it took more passes through a drawing die to make the wire smaller. The system simply migrated to electrical because of wire - not because the system was create for electrical wire. Trying to say "It's dumb because two 14 gauge wires don't make one 7 gauge wire" is completely missing why AWG is the way it is. It was never designed to be that way in the first place.