> We are lucky in the states that we have so much land and resources that we really have a lot of choices; this isn't as true for the rest of the world. South

> We are lucky in the states that we have so much land and resources that we really have a lot of choices; this isn't as true for the rest of the world. South Korea has much less land and much fewer resources, yet (relative to the rest of the world) it's just as wealthy as the United States. Ditto for Ireland, or UK (you could scream "but they were an empire!", but the question is -- how did they become an empire in the first place?) Russia has land and oil. The situation there has greatly improved -- and having grown up there myself, I was still lucky to have had such basics an education, safe drinking water, and other utilities -- yet it's nowhere near as wealthy as South Korea or the United States. Incidentally I disagree with your overall point (about zero-sum games, or that there's a binary choice between car-dependent suburbs and "dense urban living") -- but you're using a horrible argument to support it, too.