"Cutting taxes" sounds fine, until you have to face the fact that you will no longer enjoy those things that those taxes provided.
Like that $578-million-dollar school they opened in August in LA?
I mean Christ Almighty, Elon Musk has a damned private space program for less money than that.
Radar assisted cruise control
I have a foot. If I'm getting too close the car in front of me, it goes up. If I'm going too slow, it goes down. No messing with switches or reliance on electronic sensors needed.
Blind spot systems... Backup cameras
The superstructure of my car has the stiffness of undercooked spaghetti in comparison to most new cars. On the flip side, however, I can see damn near everything, because the A, B, and C pillars aren't thick enough to block much of the road, and the window in the rear hatch goes down to about two feet off the ground. In addition, I can adjust my mirrors so that just as cars leave the center mirror, they enter one of the wing mirrors, and just as they leave the wing mirrors, they enter my peripheral vision. Presto! Total situational awareness.
Traction control... Stability control
I know how to drive my car at the limit, and it's four feet tall so it's not about to roll over.
Antilock brakes
I listen for skidding, and then back off until it stops. It's surprisingly effective, you just have to de-train yourself that pushing harder equals stopping faster.
In addition, because the car is tiny and weighs next-to-nothing, it changes direction quite handily, enabling me to avoid trouble with ease compared to Mr. Suburbalade Owner, whose electronic gizmos are nice, but unable to change the physics of a top-heavy three-ton projectile. The trick here is that for this all to work well, the driver has to be attentive and a good driver. Perhaps not surprisingly, those two things are what most drivers on the road today flat-out refuse to be. Unless a sudden outbreak of common sense overtakes the driving populace, it seems like the trend of taking more and more control away from the driver and giving it to a computer is going to continue, along with the attendant increases in cost, complexity, and motorhead joy-killing. If automation is the goal, though... why don't we just build trains!?
Don't consider the long-term maintenance issues involved with the moving parts
This is already a solved problem. See railroads for more info.
Just because railroads can and have done it doesn't make it a cost-effective solution for houses. There are added maintenance costs involved, and when you start adding moving parts to a structure that's usually expected to last 20-100 years with the occasional re-shingling and coat of paint, you start shortening its effective lifespan.
the problems involved with things like plumbing and electrical service
Also a solved problem: standard connectors, valves, and switches.
Same issues as above. We can do it, and do it regularly with RVs, but most people don't want to live in RVs forever, and when something goes wrong with the blackwater tank, the maintenance gets... icky. There's also increased infrastructure costs when you have to place and maintain weatherproof hookups anywhere that somebody wants to park their house.
Every floor except the first in a multistory structure is raised off the ground. So now you have to insulate one more floor. Big deal.
Every other multistory structure typically has an enclosed and insulated ground floor with a thick foundation beneath it. That is to say, there's usually not direct exposure to the elements on the underside of every upper floor. You also lose the opportunity to take advantage of the ground's thermal mass. There's a reason raised construction is much more common in the South.
For me, the red flag in this scheme is seismic stability. Even if the structural integrity of the building can be assured -- as far as that can be done with any building in an earthquake -- what's the plan for getting a building back on the tracks if it's shaken off or worse, if the tracks are bent or broken?
You also have to anchor the building to keep it from tipping over in the wind, and have a workaround for when a wheel bearing seizes up or a pusher motor doesn't start after sitting for six months. I won't argue that the scheme is technologically possible, but the real issue is that given the initial costs, added long-term maintenance, and human expectations it's not really feasible, at least not within a sane budget. Don't get me wrong, the overall concept is *really* interesting. For my part, I have an unhealthy fascination with taco trucks -- it's a mobile restaurant! -- but at the same I'd prefer not to live in a motorized apartment block. It's not just a question of "can we?" but "should we?"
At what point does it become okay for a company to try to bring down a government?
I'd say that it's about the point where the government allows itself to become a pawn to another corporation. At that point, what else are you supposed to do?
We are not a loved organization, but we are a respected one. -- John Fisher