I think the point is valid in a larger sense, when applied to the US. The US can't be home to the hyperloop. The US political and regulatory system has become

I think the point is valid in a larger sense, when applied to the US. The US can't be home to the hyperloop. The US political and regulatory system has become so corrupt and byzantine that we just can't do big projects here any more. Not of this scale. (Seeing other comment - the Bay Bridge is nothing like this scale, and the fact that's a $7billion project works against your point not in favor of it). It isn't knee-jerk anti-unionism to discuss the union involvement either. It's not just that they'd want to unionize construction and operation, raising costs, but the unions who would feel threatened by this (airlines, rail) and other lobbying organizations, as well as the petrochemical industry would all gear up to delay, undermine and attack this project. If the Hyperloop is ever made a reality it'll be elsewhere, most likely China. The ideas will flow freely in the US but the implementation will be elsewhere, somewhere they have the will and means to make it happen. (To pre-empt the straw man that I'm saying the US is too corrupt but China might do it so I must be saying China is not corrupt - of course it is. Just a different type of corruption, one benefits the politically connected through inaction, the other through securing powerful monopolies and funneling state money to private projects like this.) All that being said, I would love to be wrong about this.