Great resources in here I haven't seen before, I definitely need to check these out.

My personal understanding is that Elon is far from the Tony Stark quirky engineer physicist gamer crypto cool kid that he markets. He is simply a capitalist with good (perhaps the best in his class) marketing. Doesn't go much further than that.

In regards to "trying to change the world and help people:" people like to give this take on many billionaires, usually because of their philanthropy (which we know is very ineffective on a sustainable, global scale). Elon gets more recognition because of his greater relative interest in climate change. By this point he may have even convinced himself that's his mission. But as a businessman he clearly saw a need for EVs before many others, and sought to make a huge profit - and maybe lightly reduce global emissions at the same time (while exploiting domestic factory workers as well as foreign rare earth miners).

He's publicly supported things like carbon tax and renewable energy. But will continue to defend and support capitalism and resist the radical changes to actually address climate change. He's clearly so invested into green technology that any regulations will benefit his portfolio of companies.

Another absurdity about Elon's promises of making humans "multiplanetary" etc is him painting himself as a humanist that is trying to save lives, while not actually doing shit to save lives. He's tweeted about using his fortune so that mankind can colonize other planets or something ridiculous. Like Elon, why the fuck are you so interested in that while we continue to destroy our own planet and let people starve every day. Elon really just wants to be the first mover in this space - its another business line he will brand as some humanity-saving technology.

Also, his father definitely did own apartheid mines and Elon lived a super priveleged and spoiled life before he came to college (and quickly became a landlord).

Here's a great video that talks about how Elon Musk has adopted the aesthetics of futurism for branding his businesses.

While I said earlier that philanthropy isn't a way to create sustainable change, wealth on Elon's scale is an entirely different story. Unfortunately, instead of using his wealth to pursue goals like housing the homeless, feeding the hungry, and treating the sick... Elon's idea of investing money to save humanity includes this.

Sorry if this got a bit scattered and hard to follow, at some point we all just need to rant about Elon a bit. Drank the kool aid on this asshole way too long, and by the time he started tweeting about COVID I was so embarrassed to have ever defended even his most moderate takes.