> Village homes compared to modern high density buildings (eg. apartments, skyscrapers) and dense cities with centralized services.

Sure, but VH is better (ecologically) than existing suburbs.

> Our current green city tech sucks and cool arcology solutions haven't been invented yet.

We might not be able to make arcologies but we can make our cities more ecological than we currently do (e.g. the Urban Permaculture video is about this.)

> I don't want permaculture, I want all the meat that I want to eat. Now make that efficient too.

In re: permaculture and meat production, most systems include meat animals (cattle, pigs, chickens, etc.) as integral parts of the designed ecosystem, and it's efficient (in terms of reduced inputs and improved quality of meat.)

> As far as I'm concerned, there is no intrinsic value to these natural habitats.

Really? Have you never experienced the value of being in a forest?

> If you invent a cheaper way to cultivate popular produce like meat and dairy, I don't need to be a scientist to see the value of that and buy it.

Right, that's Permaculture. It's cheaper. (Most modern agriculture gets huge subsidies to make it "economical".)

> What won't fly is telling people how cool Nature is if you just change your entire lifestyle around it.

Why not? It's true. Nature is cool and living in harmony with it is fun and fulfilling. It seems to me to be a fundamental issue with humanity that we deny this and try to find fulfillment in e.g. smart phones and video games and media.

> We don't ignore these externalities, every government and corporation is talking about it (the topic of this very article). There are new laws and initiatives filling the gaps. Renewable energy has a lot of funding.

Yeah, now, when the handwriting is on the wall. It's been an uphill slog against climate deniers the whole way until very recently.

> Farming conglomerates look out for their own corporate survival and factor land degradation costs into their calculations, degraded land impacts their bottom line, short and long term.

I just don't believe that. If that were true then why are we facing these problems today?

> But proposed alternatives have other externalities: they're more expensive, time-consuming, hard-to-scale or simply don't produce what consumers demand.

You say that but alternatives like Permaculture, Syntropic agriculture, regenerative agriculture, food forests, and so on, are cheaper, require less labor, scalable, and they produce higher quality products. For example Ernst Götsch (developer of Syntropic agriculture) produces the highest quality cacao in the world with yields as much as three times higher than conventional plantations.

> Can you scale Homestead paradise into a system that feeds a country of 300 million people all the milk, eggs, leather and beef they want for a dollar?

Sure.

> How about a billion?

I don't see why not.

> anyone, including Big Farm Co, can profit from such improvements.

Right. My question is why is that taking so long to set in?

> innovation and new technology is all about not accepting current limitations.

Again, that's Permaculture (et. al.) The knowledge and ability to design agriculturally productive ecologies is the innovative new technology that overcomes the current limitations of previous methods. Ecology is a science.