Virtually nobody is a professional walker or firestarter, so those are different.
And to the extent they do exist (athletes and survivalists) they might agree there is no "point" except the joy they derive from doing it themselves.
The problem is that formerly there was more alignment between the joy of solving problems with a human's mind and the business need to have problems solved.
The definition of racist border control includes deporting X00,000 brown people, some of whom had lawful status, and having virtually every one of the 10k refugee admissions be white South African.
This conversation is reminding me of arguments about non-citizens voting, or assaults committed by trans fakers in bathrooms. Both have probably happened, as some weird wealthy dual citizen has probably decided to live on food stamps at least once. But I'd bet all of them are so rare they round to zero compared to the general rates of election tampering, sexual assaults, and welfare fraud, which are perpetrated by any other group than the minority being accused in each case.
What kind of welfare? Do you have stats or stories? I'm skeptical someone wealthy would slum it for the peanuts they could get from welfare fraud.
Or if they do, surely there are ways wealthy "real Americans" could hide their money just as easily and defraud welfare, so this isn't really a problem specific to birth tourism.
They can do whatever you presume the rich birth tourist does, like deposit in foreign banks, not own US land, obfuscate land ownership through trusts or straw owners.
One of my ideas was a way to fraudulently get most of the benefits of home ownership while hiding it; why wouldn't a rich dishonest Real American do that? Pride? So you think all children of wealthy birth tourists have no pride?
It appears your argument is that foreigners are greedy, lazy, fraudulent, exploitative, and shameless, but Real Americans never stoop that low. Again, do you have statistics on this, or is just kind of a feeling?
It's just not viable if you have a mortgage and insurance. There's also FinCEN reporting though temporarily suspended. I get the feeling you dont have any experience dealing with these bureaucracies. Otherwise you wouldn't be so flippant.
I think birth tourism is an overblown fear, but I suppose their answer is that poor welfare sponges and rich-ish passport collectors are both threats, for different reasons.
FWIW the Road ACT became law anyway without his signature, but yeah if he wanted to demonstrate he cared about such things he would have signed it promptly and proudly.
The DC tunnel was billed as a hyperloop, so it's not good faith to both excuse him for never intending to build one and also claim it takes time and will eventually succeed.
Wait, is hyperloop not a Musk failure because he never said he would build it, or is it not a failure because his company is still building it? You've said both.
I see my logical flaw and agree (to the specific arguments about tunnels made in this subthread), though I made an adjacent post showing Musk later expressed intent to build a hyperloop in DC, so you can't also say he never claimed to try.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/888053175155949572 "Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins." (July 2017, years after saying he wouldn't build it himself.) Technically it's not a commitment to build, but any other leader in the market would be considered to have failed if they made such a statement and then quietly abandoned it.
Yeah under that post he also says "If you want this to happen fast, please let your local & federal elected representatives know" and "Still a lot of work needed to receive formal approval, but am optimistic that will occur rapidly". Not just "technically" not a commitment to build. Clearly dependent on other factors.
Go ahead and count it as "abandoned" if you want. He did talk about building a Hyperloop and is not currently pursuing it directly. But I think failing to win required government approval/funding is a bit different than capriciously giving up on an idea, and The Boring Company itself is far from abandoned. Very different from the solar roof which is unambiguously a commercial failure.
Feels a bit like saying I can provide lots of free electricity, if someone just gives me some perpetual motion machines. Political viability is as important to building something like this as the laws of physics are.
TBC's continued existence isn't very relevant; the point was they/he have yet to build a lasting, full-scale hyperloop, despite his statement they would try. He stopped trying, and I'm fairly sure government approval is far from the only significant obstacle to making a functional and profitable hyperloop anyway.
I might even let go of the hyperloop concept, if they built something else of DC-NYC scale that beats the alternatives in a few measurements.
And to the extent they do exist (athletes and survivalists) they might agree there is no "point" except the joy they derive from doing it themselves.
The problem is that formerly there was more alignment between the joy of solving problems with a human's mind and the business need to have problems solved.
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