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I'm not arguing against subsidies.

But, claiming that SpaceX, Tesla, or Musk personally were uniquely competitive, successful, or disruptive while they had a buffer of 5bn USD in the back pocket is misleading.

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Having a boatload of cash does not guarantee success. Elon positioned himself well to compete in areas that would receive those subsidies, and then used that money to create rocketships and electric cars.

I'm sure you can find _plenty_ of examples of people spending billions less effectively, e.g. the city of Boston spending $22 billion on a tunnel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig

I'm not saying he's a genius or unprecedented, just that he is successful, and that his success was not guaranteed.

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