> zero… economic need for this Meanwhile: a crappy house in parts of California that aren’t even economically vibrant (that is to say: no particularly promising high-paying jobs in the area) costs $300k (a good house costs a lot more of course, and a good house in a desirable area costs over $1M) and something like 3 million people crossed the southern border into the US last year, all of whom need a place to live.

We have a tremendous amount of empty space, and while I know a desert isn’t technically lifeless, I suspect hypothetical supporters would be willing to accept (or even would prefer to establish) enormous swaths of the almost unfathomably large uninhabited West being made into new National Parks and wildlife reserves so that the desert animals and plants could be preserved. I know I would want that.

I would argue that there’s nothing immoral about expanding our population from 8 billion to 10 billion, any more than there was going from 500,000 to 1,000,000 centuries ago. Both were done at the expense of altering and ultimately domesticating land once used for other animals and plants.