The artificial look visibly demands a large amount of ongoing maintenance and thus acts as a convenient display of excess spending power. It's like the peacock's tail for capitalists.

Veblen goods are a plague.

This is true for a highly attractive wild lawn as well. When things grow truly wild, they're all competing and none do fantastically. If you've got a beautiful yard full of happy native plants, you've likely done some serious work, even if you're just out-competing the invasive plants.

That being said, a yard of native plants can still do more good than a yard of grass. Grasses are cool and come in many other forms though, and can be extremely resistant to drought. Native grasses often have much deeper roots, or even taproots sometimes.

I let thistles, ragwort, clovers, and other flowering native "weeds" grow tall and flower fully, let the grass seed at knee height before cutting it each year, keep some deadfall around, and pile sticks along the fence line. Its still perfectly navigable. The grass is flattened under foot.

When cutting i use a scythe and sheers to minimise the amount of caterpillars etc. getting killed.

For my protected potted/bedded plants i use a variety of natural methods to keep aphids and snails at bay, and they work brilliantly. Bait plants (some weeds fill this purpose too), Neem oil treatment, nematodes, and more.

The amount of life, happy bugs, birds, bees, etc. i find thriving, and the variety, fills me with far more joy than the equivalent of giving my garden a bowl cut.

Forgot to add the key point...This is definitely more work than going at it with a lawnmower.

although meadow style gardens would increase bugs, i imagine they would decrease mosquitos?

More natural predators can't hurt. They don't predate other bugs.

If you step on some of Florida's native plants you'll suddenly realize why St. Augustine grass is so popular down there.

Diddums.