I guess what I was trying to say is that we first have to kind of agree on a common description of what we describe as the best solution for the problem of storage space.
Is it financial costs only? Is it energy costs over time? Is it taxes over time? Is it physical space vs ground area ratio? Is it popularity and convenience (like in the car vs train case)?
You were arguing that warehouses are cheap to build, but that only works far outside densely populated areas.
A lot of countries are settled more densely than the US due to sheer lack of available land. So if we want to describe this problem correctly, we'd also have to account for South-East Asian, or South-American, or Polynesian, or European countries in my opinion.
