The people solving hard problems when it comes to building spaceships or electric cars have had limited options when it comes to getting a paycheck to solve them. Elons ability to raise capital and fund ventures in these spaces is going to attract brilliant people. If anything everything you listed further illustrates my point, Elon exceeds in capital intensive industries. When the barrier to entry is low, he’s not so good
looks at Twitter.
I think genius in one place is good enough to be considered exceptional and achieve exceptional things. I don’t see why he must also be a genius in everything else… why must it be more than the money?