It almost seems easier, in that you have an arbitrary # of real world objects to scan and the hardware is heavily commoditized (IIRC iPhones have this built in at highres now?)
In context, the conversation was beyond a dichotomy - thankfully. Having only 2 choices leaves conversation at people insisting one is better, and becomes an argument about definitions where people take turns alternating being "right" from the viewpoint of a neutral observer.
It's proposing a solution to the author's observation that everyone is doing it in second order fashion and missing a significant amount of necessary data.
The implication is that rather than doing it the hard way via the already-obtained 2nd order dataset, it'll be easier to get a new dataset, and getting that dataset will be significantly easier that it was to get the second-order dataset, as you don't need to worry about aesthetic variety as much as teaching what level of detail is needed in the mesh for it to be "real"
