You can be really smart, even genius, and still make mistakes, or become corrupted by power and wealth.
There isn't a dichotomy between genius and asshole.
I still think Elon's contributions to society are much greater than his flaws.
And his contributions don't come from being a "genius" (there are at least hundreds of thousands of geniuses on Earth) as much as from being extremely hardworking.
I'm not drawing a dichotomy between genius and asshole, I'm saying that Musk has revealed himself to be quite a dumbass in reality. For instance, you have to be exceptionally dumb to pay $44B for a company worth $12B.
I'm not saying he doesn't have some talents. But like SBF and Elizabeth Holmes, his superpower seems to be creating a reality distortion field, not economics, physics, or anything else that makes for a long-term success.
There are a lot of anecdotal stories about teams at Tesla and SpaceX managing up to keep him from making terrible decisions all the time. I used to thing it just grousing, but now I'm not so sure.
There isn't a dichotomy between genius and asshole.
I still think Elon's contributions to society are much greater than his flaws.
And his contributions don't come from being a "genius" (there are at least hundreds of thousands of geniuses on Earth) as much as from being extremely hardworking.