Well, this discussion is in the context of airships, so there's no question that everything that doesn't require potential energy to defeat gravity and to stay in position is more efficient.
The most efficient solution is btw not doing anything, and just leave the goods where they are produced, and stop producing too much for the own population. I'm pointing out that the concepts of finance and economies don't necessarily come hand in hand with what's more efficient to build. Otherwise people would use trains and not cars and planes.
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.
The most efficient solution is btw not doing anything, and just leave the goods where they are produced, and stop producing too much for the own population. I'm pointing out that the concepts of finance and economies don't necessarily come hand in hand with what's more efficient to build. Otherwise people would use trains and not cars and planes.