I can't believe people complain about charity when so many other companies do nothing. Same with Mr.Beast's charity acts. There's something wrong with people who do nothing and hate on other people doing charity.
However, I do think Musk genuinely likes to help people^ (e.g. Puerto Rico and Ukraine), but also I feel his response to the (valid) rejection of his help by the divers in Thailand was ungracious and maybe a little telling. Hopefully he’s grown since then
^ also it’s good PR
> you can finally care about other things besides making more money
I think his 'philanthropic' efforts pre-date the point where he was the richest man in the world. But tbf, his philanthropy was always tied to promotion of his various enterprises (e.g., deploying free batteries, solar, satellite internet), so it can't be entirely disentangled from his business interests. In the counterfactual where he just had the shirt on his back, figuratively speaking, he wouldn't give it up for someone more in need.
By my measure, he isn't a giving person, but he's always on the search for win-wins. i.e., how can I help people, and grow my business, and build cool shit. Building cool shit is his core drive, and everything else is incidental. Which kind of explains bad business decisions like buying Twitter. Though he hasn't really done anything 'cool' with that – it's more just his curious plaything.
It is possible that people are interpreting this 30 day promotional period as “Starlink offers hurricane survivors $120/mo internet access starting November 2nd”, which would not be factually inaccurate assuming today as the start date of the promotion. $120/mo is roughly double the average broadband cost in e.g. the Asheville area.