I'm generally skeptical of any claims that Musk somehow got to where he is purely on luck or privilege.

If you've been in start up culture, it really doesn't seem that unusual. When you're bringing something new and exciting to the market, the feeling of being the first to be here and do this is so unbelievably heady. You live on adrenaline 24/7 and it's FUN as hell to see how hard you can work and how much better than everyone else you/your team can be.

You get lift-a-car levels of pure cortisol running through your veins for weeks at a time and if you have some narcissistic butt nugget telling you that you can do something impossible, it's easy to believe. There's a reason that so many hot new tech startup CEOs turn out to be crooks - they're over represented in the space.

Think about being some lowly engineer or copy writer or salesbro and you go from a horrible dead end corporate gig where you have no power and everyone hates being there and you don't get to create efficiency ever for any reason because it's so hard to get anyone to want to change, and then you get recruited by someone with a personality disorder and your head filled with dreams and you're immediately making waves because you're young and smart and can do a better job without a boardroom of 80 year olds. You can work yourself into oblivion and feel privileged for the opportunity.

It's perfectly reasonable for assholes like Musk to accidentally be successful a few times before their sins catch up to them. And once they're exposed, they devolve so, so, so quickly. Up until a few years ago, Musk was feeding on a steady diet of acclaim and power. As soon as he stopped getting his way, his impulses caught up to him.

This is why capitalism is always going to be the way it is. It rewards the worst shitheads reliably.