Anyway, it's an interesting discussion. I do believe there's a benefit to distant xc. And there's one to showing that you can follow someone else's schedule, like a cfi would.
Both are just routes to the regionals.
I’ve followed this conversation since I have children who may choose to pursue the airlines for a career. You, like a number of posters, have argued it’s all just means to an end and being a CFI has no intrinsic value over other routes to hitting mins for an ATP and a regional job. Like others you argue that flying around the country building time in the “system” is superior to flying around the home drome teaching some slob how to fly a traffic pattern, survive stalls, and otherwise learn the basics of flight. There are definitely pros and cons to both methods of building time. However, having done the airline thing for a little bit now, I would rather work with a pilot who built time as a CFI. Why? Well in order to survive and thrive as an instructor a pilot has to figure out how to deal with a wide range of personality and learning types, while never allowing that student to do something stupid that could kill them both. No two flights with a student are the same. Students are amazingly creative in their attempts to kill you. Flying around the country in the cheapest time building airframe you can find is probably no where near as challenging. The cheapest airplane available is unlikely to be IFR capable, which is the experience that would be most valuable from tooling aimlessly about the country. The airlines are all about working on the company’s schedule, flying through dogpoop weather, and interacting in a professional manner with other pilots. All that said, the CFI who never seeks out opportunities to instruct instrument flight and avoids ever flying an approach he isn’t intimately familiar with is also shortchanging themselves.
Long story short, I would recommend pursuing the CFI route while enjoying an occasional cross country jaunt to somewhere new, preferably with some challenges from the weather.