It is because you should separate the style of execution from the target effect: Musk sounds like a bumbling idiot but... he s halving payroll... it's gonna reduce the load tremendously for a while and if he stops innovating, swallow a loss compensated by paying customers for a while, it might end up surviving enough to provide him some returns.
The difference between me, clever socially but idiot as an entrepreneur, and Musk, the definition of asshole but with good instincts, is enough I suppose ?
IMO it is way more damning to us as a society that people can be this stupid and still become so insanely rich, then if someone had an evil masterplan to manipulate others into making them more and more.
But at the end of the day, this concern is dwarfed by the fact that in either case we let them get away with it and ultimately reward them with insane wealth. This is the true damning of our society that these people are given all this wealth and power in the first place, and after the fact, honestly they can do whatever they like. And what they do isn’t pretty at all.