I absolutely agree, it’s pretty much unarguable evidence that Musk is not primarily motivated by profit wrt SpaceX and Tesla. Yet still people hate or try to find a what about argument. Doing good is hard because other people don’t want you to.
What is the logic behind claiming A indicates B here? All sorts of profit-seeking enterprises are unlikely to succeed. Venture capital in general is often about making big bets with high failure rates. Speaking more broadly, new for-profit businesses typically fail in general - "According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 20% of U.S. small businesses fail within the first year. By the end of their fifth year, roughly 50% have faltered. After 10 years, only around a third of businesses have survived" according to one source.
If profit really weren't Elon's primary objective, he would have started charities, co-ops or at least B Corporations (ignoring that those are basically a scam)
People who are only in for the money would have likely rode their golden parachute out of those companies a long time ago when things first got tough.
If someone isn't in it for the money, that doesn't therefore mean they're trying to be just generally 'charitable'. Elon clearly wants to be known for facilitating in bringing humanity to the next step (or steps) of its technological future. Pretty much every venture he's done (electric cars, mars colonization, high-speed people movers, chips in brains) have been towards that goal.
There aren't charities he can donate to that would do these things, or if there are, they aren't moving as fast as he has been by tackling it himself.
Probably at best he could donate to cure some disease like Bill Gates is doing, which, while worthwhile and great, is clearly not something Elon cares about all that much (especially with his kind of shitty views about the Coronavirus pandemic, which I'm sure is mainly because it did its best to put the brakes on all of his ventures).
I didn't say donate to charities, I said start one. You even cite an example - Bill Gates doesn't just hand out money, he's involved in organizations with specific mandates, and there's an organization with him and his wife's name on it that does stuff.
If Elon wants to change the world there are many options at his disposal other than buying the title "founder" of a for-profit electric company he didn't found
First, not being motivated only by money doesn't mean he doesn't like money. More money buys more access and more funding to be able to do what he does, and the fame and attention from being one of the richest people in the world (which he had to get that from somewhere in business, he didn't start out a billionaire) lets him direct attention to causes he cares about, say 'Hey look, this is important' and people listen (at least somewhat).
If he starts a charity, it's not generating new income so he has to rely on only his own and external donations. It may be enough, with how much he is worth currently, but why not take all the free funny money from investors in the stock market while we're at it?
I'm not actually arguing that he's a charitable human being, I'm arguing he's motivated to progress humanity in a technological way (which could have charitable side effects). And either he's the head of a business making that change, or he's funding other companies to be that business, so why not have direct control over it?
That was ULA before SpaceX came around. They had a monopoly on government launch and they won almost no commercial contracts on the global market because they were uncompetitive. SpaceX has totally reversed both of those. They have saved the government $Bs by undercutting ULA and is the top commercial launcher in the world.
Not only govt contracts. Also private satellite launches, their own satellite internet network, and prolly more.
Of there was an untapped market in deep sea, it might have been tapped by him as well. But judging from the oil+gas exploration there I think that's not quite as untapped (pun maybe intended).
Their financials have nothing to do with private launches. They are doing them at a loss funded by government contracts. The satellite internet project is a piggyback on government contracts. Starlink is only viable if SpaceX exists, and SpaceX can only exist as long as the NASA billions are flowing in. They don't have the money to invent the SpaceX to make the Starlink, and Starlink won't be so profitable as to be able to shoulder the cost of inventing private space flight, so they need the government funding to create the private space flight foundation that could make Starlink some day profitable without having to fund that foundation.
I'm not against the government creating new markets like this, NASA has been doing it for a long time.
Same thing with SpaceX not being about going to Mars. It's about making money too!
The going to Mars/ good for env stories are to get some public goodwill behind them from a certain crowd.