It is understandable that people are selfish but why society as a whole should pay for that? It is a relatively recent development, no more than a century, that people actually have such a power to derail urbanization while at the same time profiteer off of it. Society just pays [1] those people basically because they were born at the right time.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-05/nimbyism-...