As well as completely transforming many people's view of Musk (he ceased to be "the least bad billionaire" for many), the case also reflected extremely badly on the US legal system, showing that if you are rich enough you can get away with pretty much anything.
"Least bad billionaire" is a weird tag to give Musk.
I mean, there are a bunch of people who either inherited a billion dollars or married into it, and, not being psychopaths, they just decided to spend that money doing good and have done with it. That seems pretty easily to be "less bad" than somebody like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or Warren Buffett who set out to acquire wealth..
I guess if you've got a really out-there moral utility function maybe saving the eyesight of a million children or whatever counts for nothing while making a slightly better toaster oven is a 100% goal achieved, but outside that I can't see any way Musk could be the "least bad billionaire".
Actually I can see a case for a different weird utility function if we also had some billionaires who got wealthy from scientific discoveries or mathematical breakthroughs or philosophical insights. If Martin Hellman had earned $100M per year since the 1980s for licensing fees from DH kex he could be a billionaire and we could argue about whether that's an important thing to give to the world. Or if Judith Butler had become fabulously wealthy explaining to people that gender is a social construct, she'd be a billionaire and we could argue whether that was great. But in reality we do not pay philosophers or cryptographers billions of dollars, that sort of money goes to somebody like Musk or Bezos.
