People compare it to what's currently available, because if it's not any better there's no reason for customers to use it, which means there's no continued revenue stream to fund developing something better.
The Wright Flyer was far cheaper than the Hyperloop will be to develop, and airplanes had uses beyond just transporting people (namely military, which meant government-subsidized development).
Might as well complain about the lack of seats, then (somebody in this comment thread did!) since no passengers means no revenue for further development.
Your comment makes sense, when applied to the first commercial deployment. Which is years out at best and nobody knows what it would really look like. This stuff right now is not even a prototype, it's barely a proof of concept. Complaining about the specs is on essentially the same level as taking a wind-tunnel model of an airliner and saying that it's not big enough to fit any people.
The Wright Flyer was far cheaper than the Hyperloop will be to develop, and airplanes had uses beyond just transporting people (namely military, which meant government-subsidized development).