In defense of Elon Musk
&gt;He is under attack. For tweeting the wrong thing, for not making enough cars, for appearing unstable. Some of the criticisms have merit. Much of it is myopic and small-brained, from sideline observers gleefully salivating at the opportunity to take him down a peg. But what have these stock analysts and pontificators done for humanity?<p>Yeesh, what an opening paragraph. This, and the rest of the articles, seem to focus on the idea that Elon Musk isn&#x27;t just a slightly more philantropic than average billionaire with a very good PR department, albeit one he&#x27;s doing his best to undo the work of.<p>As one of the articles rightly states, Musk provided some funding for these projects, but is at best one person among tens of thousands actually responsible for _any_ of the achievements of &quot;his&quot; companies - scare quotes intentional, for between the loans and government grants it starts to become unclear what, other than the cult of personality which evidently no longer serves the needs of relatively mature and legitimate enterprises, he actually brings to the table here, beyond being an ideas guy who can afford to throw money behind getting external funding to try things.<p>Whether he deserves the shit he gets talked about him is a matter for debate, but it&#x27;s very much a reaction against nonsense like one of the articles here comparing him to Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark, two comic-book superheroes defined by superhuman brilliance and superhuman finances, while Musk clearly can have only one of those things.<p>At the end of the day, though - do we need articles defending a man with a net worth of twenty billion dollars from the average citizen--who&#x27;s net worth is closer to twenty _thousand_ dollars--&#x27;s criticisms? No, we don&#x27;t. Whatever criticisms might be had, they&#x27;re clearly not stopping him from doing whatever he likes.