Can't it be both? The guy has an impressive depth to him. He worked on a payment system and space exploration. Produced a movie and brought to market electric cars people actually like.
What's a little rent-seeking on the side?
What's a little rent-seeking on the side?
You don't hear anything but lawsuits from Apple these days and no innovation at all.
At least Musk is still pushing the envelope.
There's a difference between doing thing and doing things right and going the extra mile and putting in the effort to polish it up making it use friendly and developer friendly by having good documentation.
Electric car existed before Tesla but nowhere as good as the Tesla, rockets existed before SpaceX but they were extremely expensive and mostly funded by taxpayer money touch screen phone existed before Apple but they were awful.
So what's your point?
The auto industry is much murkier, because Detroit gets a lot of subsidies too, so you have to subsidize the competition.
He may well be a rent-seeker but the other ones are not doing electrical cars or space devices, they're funding their summer house, or investing in traditional (let's not compete with ourselves) companies.