And then those people will want things like “electricity” and “a network of wide paved roads” and “Internet” and “drinking water” and “sewage” and “timely package delivery to their front door” and “big box stores with parking lots the size of two city blocks” - and those things at that density have absolutely terrible unit economics and environmental externalities.

I frequently see people complain about how traffic is so bad, gas prices are so high, their local drivers are insane, and how dare they have to pay tolls and parking fees. Wow, I wish there were some form of spatial displacement that didn’t involve any of that!

Heh everything you mention there is available in thousands upon thousands of small towns across the US - basically anywhere there's a Walmart that isn't a city.

Yes, and those have terrible unit economics and environmental externalities! We should not be looking at the unsettled land in between as an opportunity to stretch ourselves even thinner!

If you want to spread out you can do it without robbing the people who didn't to pay for your roads and utilities, and then banning them from building mid rise or transit.

As they should, but a thing that needs planning maps and isn't visible from an airplane is that those who don't want to spread out can't not spread out.

So the freedom is one-way.

Example: almost all of SF bans building apartments

What people want is of far less moment than what real-estate agents, collectively, want. They drive local government and planning almost everywhere in the US, to the exclusion of almost everyone else.