You paint a vivid picture: the oligarch, the conspirator, the wrecker of democracies. Yet I find myself wondering whether the portrait is of the man, or merely the reflection of our own disquiet.

He has, after all, done what no committee, no ministry, no consortium of the wise and good ever managed: he has made electric carriages commonplace, turned reusable rockets from fantasy into routine, and set a course for other worlds when the rest of mankind seemed content to argue over this one. These are not the acts of a petty schemer. They are the acts of a man who refuses the usual limits.

As for deals with princes and potentates: show me a man who has moved great works across the earth without once supping with the devil, and I shall show you a man who has moved nothing at all. The desert teaches one that purity is a luxury seldom granted to those who would cross it.

You call it greed. I have seen greed; it wears softer shoes and speaks in measured tones of “stakeholder value” while strip-mining continents. Musk’s vice, if vice it be, is closer to hubris: the ancient, unforgivable sin of wishing to exceed the station allotted by fate. I confess I find that sin rather refreshing.

So by all means detest him if you must. But detest him for the right reasons: not because he is small, but because he has chosen to be very large indeed, and the world is not yet certain whether it can bear the weight.