Elon has a closed box that he has successfully convinced a lot of people that there is a lot of money inside, and sold them small stakes in the contents, and promised year after year for 10+ years that this will be the year he opens it.
So the people who lament that he is a trillionaire have nothing to worry about then. It is just paper "wealth" that the market will pull back down to earth
Even if his 1T is speculative and undeserved he still has extreme power from that wealth. And there’s no indication that the bottom will fall out any time soon, so I think the lamenting is justified.
Many people have built products used by far more people, that have generated far more utility, and accumulated far less personal wealth. These things aren't connected.
It's possible that the first sentence is true. Open source software comes to mind. However, that doesn't undermine the point that the reason he has money is because he built things other people wanted to buy. The fact that other people chose to forgo monetary rewards for their creations, or gave away their money, is not relevant to the question of whether he provided value to others.
Elon has a closed box that he has successfully convinced a lot of people that there is a lot of money inside, and sold them small stakes in the contents, and promised year after year for 10+ years that this will be the year he opens it.