"The trick is to manage to accommodate the increasing population without paving over all arable land and places of beauty..." ~ GUEST

Not possible because each person wants as much money as possible for his/her property. It's human nature. The real estate developer can pay 2 million for a 60 acre farm. Farmers usually can't.

"...all of these considerations must be swept aside to make way for the GREAT GOD PROFIT - musn't they?"

"All considerations" is pretty broad. Shimrod is a raving Socialist so everything appears to him to be the product of his boogey men: capitalists.

The main problems are overpopulation and government corruption. In California, where GUEST is from, re-zoning farm land into housing developements usually involves getting a corrupt shill in the planning commission, often using "minority contractors" to make the developement proposals, eventually the actual construction is arranged and financed by organized crime money. It stinks, partly because our government has too much power, not because it has too little power.