> Even if the real estate/investment lobby is busy buying up all the "prime" land, its not like the US is a small country to work around them somewhere.
Even the US being a big country doesn't help much. The value of land for the purpose of living on it is largely defined by the infrastructure around a particular piece of land: are there schools, shops, doctors, ... nearby, or do you have to drive through an empty desert for hours to reach them? And unless faster forms of individual travel are invented, this will limit the amount of "usable" land even in an imaginary country with unlimited boundaries.
Even the US being a big country doesn't help much. The value of land for the purpose of living on it is largely defined by the infrastructure around a particular piece of land: are there schools, shops, doctors, ... nearby, or do you have to drive through an empty desert for hours to reach them? And unless faster forms of individual travel are invented, this will limit the amount of "usable" land even in an imaginary country with unlimited boundaries.