Yeah, I get the sense that this argument was supposed to be a reductio, but as you say it's a decent argument. No, we shouldn't give chimpanzees two-bedroom condos on top of the subway because they'll enjoy it strictly less than they'll enjoy the undeveloped rainforest (and humans are the other way around, so giving the apartment to the chimp and the rainforest to the human is Pareto-suboptimal). But we certainly shouldn't mistreat the chimp because we can, and we absolutely should not destroy the chimp's habitat to build human housing, just because the human has the equipment to do it and the chimp doesn't have the equipment or weapons to stop it!
