The "he had very rich parents" is often used to reduce one's achievements. A quick google search shows there are over 60 million "millionaires" in the world, yet less than 1% know how to turn it into a billion.
There is some pretty good evidence that wealth accumulation accelerates. In particular if you go above a certain threshold things will only go up (and go up faster). If that is the case and if we add some noise to the system. Some percentage of people will always become billionaires just by luck alone (and importantly never loose that status). I'm not saying that Musk got there by just luck, but the existence of a billionaire does not proof he is a genius.
I think the Tesla's are cool, SpaceX is immpressive, I enjoy his online trolling but I don't think he is a genius. The rocket scientist he employs at SpaceX is a genius. I got caught up on the way you phrased your response-- I felt that it was written in bad faith with "he's just an engineer who had a very rich father, Did he invent something that I'm not aware of? ". However seing as you were responding to someone who elevated him to Genius I can see why.
