> He bought his way into Tesla, for example.

He did, but that doesn't come close to the whole story:

• July 1, 2003, Incorporated by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning

…

• August 2007, Eberhard was asked to step down by the board; Michael Marks was brought in as interim CEO

• December 2007, Ze'ev Drori became CEO and President

• May 2008, "The Truth About Cars" website launched a "Tesla Death Watch", as Tesla needed another round of financing to survive

• October 2008, Musk succeeded Drori as CEO and fired 25% of Tesla employees

Leading to:

• By January 2009, Tesla had raised US$187 million ($70 million from Musk) and delivered 147 cars.

Not 147 thousand, just 147. After 5.5 years.

> I don't even know that I buy the idea that the CEO is really the reason for any company's success; are we going to claim that Bill Gates is responsible for the success of desktop computing? I mean, you can if you want but I would not personally say that. I think it's a combination of good marketing, right-place-right-time, and happening to hire the right people for the job.

I think it's all those things, plus luck and skill. Likewise for all the other CEOs out there. It is the opposite side of the same coin as complaining that Musk didn't really found Tesla — yup, he wasn't in the room with Eberhard and Tarpenning, but it was Musk's choices and actions as leader which turned the company from "Tesla Death Watch" to a viable business rather than choosing to close it down and sell off the assets to compensate the shareholders, which would not have been unreasonable given how many people at the time (and even today) are going "Batteries? Pah! Give us hydrogen!" for whatever reason.

> Even before SpaceX got off the ground, since I was a kid, people have been complaining at how little NASA was accomplishing, so I think someone breaking into the commercial space flight was inevitable. Elon probably does deserve a bit of credit for funding it when he did but I'm not convinced that he was uniquely qualified to to it,

I'm excited to see what Relativity Space and Rocket Lab do in this space.

Conversely, Blue Origin (founded 18 months before SpaceX) hasn't done anything impressive.

Musk's qualification sure isn't unique, but that doesn't mean it's universal either.

> and I absolutely reject the notion that "because he was successful with some businesses, he's going to save the world".

Agreed; some of his recent hubris does seem related specifically to this.

> He also lies. A lot. Like, more often than he tells the truth. He just makes shit up. He has claimed we will have self-driving cars "next year" for the last 6 years. He has repeatedly claimed that it's something we can do "today". He claimed that the Boring Company can "pay for itself with brick production".

> All of this to me kind of implies his success is more stochastic than any kind of eccentric genius.

There's a phrase about putting people on pedestals, and the view from those on the ground looking up.

I view him as being a relatively unfiltered stochastic genius. D&D aligment, chaotic neutral. He may only be half as smart as he thinks he is, but he's not actually an idiot, just wildly (and in some cases horrifyingly) over-optimistic.

And his successes are all directly tied to the same personality traits as his failures: he has an idea, he won't let go of it, so he keeps bashing at it until progress happens. And he's an effective salesman so he can bring investors along for that ride.