It's worth noting that Elon, for all his faults, does seem to be leading innovation. But I agree with you about Branson and Bezos.
1. If the public money being thrown at SpaceX were redirected, what could NASA (or other private companies) do with it?
2. If the administrators of NASA collected $80B (combined) in salary and bonuses last year, largely from public coffers, would that be considered reasonable?
NASA knows exactly what they're buying. They've just become such a bureaucratic, top-heavy, risk-adverse organization (by Congressional design) that it's a better deal to outsource pieces to SpaceX.
Although Raptors are a great achievement, their design if used alone is not made for bigger loads. SpaceX is stacking them now for larger ships. Hopefully the whole system will prove reliable on higher flights, and a different design won't be needed.
Elon Musk is not a net positive for humanity.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/elon-musk-confesses-to-l...
(That said, while I’d like to be part of the first wave of Mars colonists, my concern with his politics make me not want it if he’s in charge of much more than the logistics).
Do these people have the same amount of power and influence as Musk? If they don't that's very much a differentiator.
His power is a multiplier for his actions, which are better than average, and so in that regard makes him a net positive.
If it turns out I’m being overly pessimistic about human attitudes, the result can be inverted.
Regardless, even if the proportions are inverted, his words have the power to strengthen the pro-coup numbers, which is not the same as keeping baseline humanity numbers and certainly makes a difference.
In any case, by condemning an entire country of roughly 11 million people to live under the rule of a foreign-backed government against the people's will is always going to be a net negative, regardless of other endeavours.
Since this is a matter of opinion (what's positive, what's negative, how much weight each action has on either direction, etc. is very much subjective), it seems like we simply disagree.