plenty of accurate ways to critique elon, no need to make yourself look foolish by suggesting tesla and spacex and other ventures are just ponzi schemes.
Tesla has manufactured over 3 million cars. They are so successful that the majority of electric vehicles in developed countries are Teslas. Since Tesla is a publicly traded company, you can look at their SEC filings and see that less than 2% of their revenue comes from subsidies.[1] 86% of their revenue is from selling and leasing cars. 8% is from services related to those cars, and 5% is from energy generation and storage. In Tesla's accounting, regulatory credits are a rounding error.
I have a hard time figuring out how either of these businesses are a confidence trick.
1. https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/0000...
NASA could of also taken on those contracts and launched more rockets than they are currently are doing.
Elon isn't launching them on is lonesome as some great misunderstood innovator. He's the public face to a lot of investment, which could easily go elsewhere and be more or less successful, who knows.
https://medium.com/geekculture/spacex-vs-nasa-cost-4fae45482...
Feel free to maintain your bias, but it's a fact that smart engineers can achieve success under more than just one single showman.