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This is a very common idea, but it makes little sense to me. As the richest man in the world, money is the last thing Elon needs more of.

None of these plans seem to enrich Elon more than anyone one else. He's working on it for free.

Honestly, I think this is more like when a $300k SWE takes a week off to fix a bug in their favorite open source project.

He's clearly implied he has some priorities vis-à-vis the government:

1. Relaxing Regulation for autonomous driving

2. Relaxing Regulation for rocket launches so he can get to Mars while he's still living.

3. Contracts for SpaceX wrt to space exploration and Starlink usage

Yes indeed, he doesn't need it for the money, but the power, that is a lot more helpful to him now.