Let’s say you had some scales, with “Capitalism - expiration date has passed, toxic” on one side labeled D (dead), and “Capitalism - great future” on the other labeled Y (yay). Then you add the Musk.
For the one side, there’s PayPal which puts a heavy weight on D.
There’s the expensive electric luxury cars with free charging stations - rich people get free energy for their expensive cars. Not a ringing endorsement of capitalism.
There’s Space-X - cool, a new vendor on a list that all do impressive things. They cut costs thanks to not being cronies in a crony-capitalist system but also cut corners and have a more dramatic string of failures than any of their more risk-averse competitors. I’d give them some extra Y because they do cool things and are not yet fully embedded into the crony-capitalist system the way most of aerospace is.
Paypal: 5,000,000 kg of Capitalist death
Tesla: 100 kg Capitalism yay
Space-X: 1,000,000 kg Capitalism yay
Elon Musk’s net existence: 4,899,900 kg of Capitalist death
all results plus or minus 5,000,000 kg.
I love Space-X (despite Musk being loathsomeness embodied), but don’t really see Musk as grounds for making a grand pronouncement on whether capitalism has outlived its usefulness one way or another - he’s done at least as much bad as good.
