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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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the nice bits where people want to live are often much smaller

"Nice bits" are much more defined by neighbors than anything else. I mean, there's not a lot of people living in, say, Montana (compared to the area). Maybe it's because it's cold in winter? But how people live in Alberta, Canada then which would have even harsher winter? I think given enough infrastructure (which is downstream from people paying for establishing it) a lot of places would be fine for people to live in. Maybe not everybody gets to live in places with 100% optimal climate - even then people live both in Florida and in Alaska, so obviously not everybody has the same understanding of the optimal climate - but there are a lot of places with perfectly livable climate (given modern infrastructure) and a lot of them right now is completely empty. Like, not "rural" but just nothing at all for miles and miles. I personally enjoy having some empty spaces and don't really want to convert 100% of Earth surface to human habitat, but I can't help noticing there's a real lot of capacity out there, much more than needed to accommodate another billion. How to do it properly is a tough question, but livable space doesn't seem to be a major issue here.