whilst I appreciate that a nest inside/too close to a human habitation has to be dealt with, the assertion:

"the upshot is they put themselves in our way, rather than the other way around"

is looking at it from the point of view that wasps should be subservient to the wishes of humanity, aka they are less important... again, nature may not agree...

the way things are going it might be interesting to speculate which species will outlast the other - one thing is for sure wasps, together with moths and many other insects, underpin a lot of what we take for granted in the way of pollination and pest control for example

live and let live