I do think there is some legitimacy to the view, though. It's a bit like saying that no future people could ever do something more important or more interesting with a location than what was done by someone long in the past.
Especially in a world with a growing population and increasing centralization, there will be fewer and fewer opportunities for individuals from new generations to do new things.
This doesn't really have anything to do with architecture. No one is arguing that newer buildings look nicer than older buildings. The new buildings won't be historical landmarks, and will probably also be bulldozed when they outlive their usefulness.
The argument is being able to look at some court house built in 1925 is not more important than people in 2018 (and forever into the future) having more affordable places to live.
I tend to agree that the "no historical preservation" viewpoint is way overblown. E.g., there are lots of monuments and buildings in Boston and Philly that should always be preserved because they are integral to telling the nation's founding story. But there are lot of "historical landmarks/buildings" in the USA that are really only significant to the handful of people who pushed to make them "historical" (and are probably now dead anyways).
> The argument is being able to look at some court house built in 1925 is not more important than people in 2018 (and forever into the future) having more affordable places to live.
A compromise can be converting the court house into apartments or offices, so that it can have contemporary use but at the same time some aspects of its historic appearance are preserved (such as its façade). Of course, other parts of its historical value are going to be lost – it is likely impossible to maintain the historical integrity of the actual court rooms in the process of converting the building into offices or apartments – but it is still better than knocking down the building entirely.
I used to live around the corner from an old water pump house converted to offices. When they switched from coal-fired pumps to electrical ones, suddenly the amount of space consumed by the pumps shrunk dramatically. So they removed all the boilers and turned it into office space instead. Part of me wishes the boilers had stayed, but it is better than knocking down the building entirely.
There definitely needs to be more barriers when it comes to designating places and areas as historical, but this is a pretty harsh take.