[Sangermaine]

Or if one were less charitably inclined toward Musk and his cult of personality, one might say he's a con man deliberately misleading people, especially investors, to get money out of them and papering over his distortions/deceptions with prattle about the future.

[Doxin]

I don't think a proper con-man would go to the trouble of actually launching rockets/building cars/digging tunnels though. You can argue whether or not he is conning people but to me it seems that even if that were true it's not on purpose.

[buvanshak]

>I don't think a proper con-man would go to the trouble of actually launching rockets/building cars/digging tunnels though...

Why do you think that? Wouldn't it just give away the fact that he is a fraud? A smart conman will be able to run the con as long as possible with as many victims as possible...

>You can argue whether or not he is conning people but to me it seems that even if that were true it's not on purpose.

May be he is a natural then. I mean, he is as stupid as the people he ends up fooling. I really think that might be the case here. So in that case he is not smart. He is just dumb is a way that is just in tune with a lot of dumb people out there, who then buy into his "vision" and invest in him, because their understanding of the problems are as shallow as the perp who is proposing the solutions...