He has to be good at something, maybe at taking bets and convincing people to give him money, like other HNr suggests. Who knows.
This line of thought always comes across as "ego defending rationalization" to me. That is, we don't like to believe that someone who is such an ass clown can be so successful, so we just chalk it up to his family's wealth or luck or something.
But it's clear to me from Musk's communications that:
1. He is extremely intelligent, at least in his ability to understand topics across a wide range of areas (business, technical, finance).
2. He is extremely driven. He could have easily put his feet up after PayPal but he chose to get involved in immensely difficult, grand projects.
3. He works extremely hard (at least when he isn't tweet trolling). I don't think anyone questions his long work hours and sleeping at the office during the Model 3 production ramp up.
4. At least until recently, he was able to get other extremely smart and driven people to follow his lead.
I guess it's really number 4 that seems like the biggest change in the past couple years in my opinion. I mean, I've got to believe a lot of smart people at Tesla and SpaceX are looking on thinking "WTF is Musk on??"
Combine this with a lot of money and you end up with someone with both the inclination and ability to take risky major actions quickly, as well as the resources necessary to walk away from bad bets intact. Over time I think this would reward and encourage the growth of impulsive tendencies in a person. But what happens if that person takes a wild swing that fails in a way they can't get away from or buy their way out of? (Not to mention the compounding effect of any drugs they might be on.)
There is also the Nobel disease.
The key is #4, I think he managed to have incredible challenges at his other companies that brought it people who knows not only how to perform the job very well but to manage him very well.
*I still have doubts about how much of his smarts is being smart or just sounding smart, he is certainly not dumb by any stretch.
Perhaps in the past? But he seems favourably inclined these days.
Don't get me wrong, lots of people are spouting off against Musk for various unrelated reasons, but pg is not a neutral character in this fight.
> I don't know how to captain a huge container ship but when I see one that has been blocking the Suez Canal for six days I am pretty confident in my ability to conclude that something must have gone very wrong.
A lot of people "work hard" but they do not work smart. Musk in an extreme version of this. Unless he is not working himself and everyone else into the ground, he is not content. Everything has to be a crisis, and if there isn't one, create it.
For example, I definitely always got the sense that pg had a negative assessment of him from some of pg's writings about PayPal's early days.
But I'll say I always admired Musk for his sheer tenacity and ability to work extremely hard (and his ability to convince other people to work extremely hard). I'd say my opinion about him started to change right when he started bizarrely libeling that guy in Thailand as "pedo-guy".
So I guess my question is whether he's always been a collosal asshole, or whether that just grew over time as his wealth and power removed any constraints on his ego.