Well tourism is a pretty important revenue source for France and many other European countries, that's not particularly surprising.

If you want to see the non-theme park France feel free to ask, I can give you the address of my favourite kebab in a 70's style banlieue dortoir, you'll love it.

Even in rural France, outside a few picturesque places and views, the reality has become pretty ugly in the last 30 or 40 years (and it keeps accelerating). In many villages (even small ones with less than a couple hundred inhabitants, even quite remote from cities), private housing development have spread around the historical village, generally in an anarchic manner (one can mock some forms of very organised housing, but anarchy is worse, it just pops up here and there with no thought for infrastructure, openings, or future development). Meanwhile the historical village is dying, houses are crumbling. Shops close in the centre and are replaced by shoebox monstrosities in the surroundings, made for cars.

Often the population is not growing, it just wastes a lot more space, and does it in a relatively ugly way. As the condition of the historical village degrades, it also becomes ugly. At my place, the population keeps decreasing, it is down to only one fifth of what it once was, and yet the spread accelerates.

For foreigners: just fool around Google Maps and StreetView, to have a look at the spread around many village kernels, and at the village entrances.

A random starting point (one in many thousands): https://www.google.fr/maps/@43.4947119,0.923205,1184m/data=!...

Look at the spread (as more or less organised areas, but also along roads). Then try to find the historical village limits, see how small it was compared to now. Well, the number of inhabitants was about the same as now.

I'd take anything from the Cato institute with a boulder of halite, seeing as it's an anti-regulation propaganda outfit funded by billionaires who consider any constraint on their ability to convert natural resources into personal wealth as a grave moral outrage.

Your argument is basically an ad hominem, and not something that is particularly welcome on HN, as you probably are aware.

Whomever is financing the Cato institute is completely irrelevant to the argument made.

Had I not cited the source, would you have actually considered the point?

Koch billionaire libertarian propaganda farm that released look-alike "IPCC" reports saying climate change was a hoax.