I understand fully what you said about perhaps respecting Musk more if he wasn’t dipping his hands into those subsidies. But I do view these things overall in a different light.
If you are not breaking the law when you are using the loophole or openly lying when obtaining welfare, how can you be culpable?
To fully expect people to be virtuous is a Leftist concept that our Founders would have (and did) completely rejected, which is why our Constitution was constructed in the way that it was.
It was constructed that way to take into account the innate flaws, shortcomings, and inevitable corruptions of Man. In the eyes of the founders, it was dangerous to assume that people would do the “right thing” so the Constitution was written to assume that people would do the wrong thing and try to prevent them from doing so.
We live (or at least, used to live) in a Constitutional Republic which is the rule of laws, not an oligarchy (which is what we live in now) which is a rule of a group of humans. Rules are rules. Implement good rules and people must follow or break them.
The FAR larger issue I have is not with people who use loopholes or are outright openly enabled due to laws legally passed by legislation, the MAJOR issue I have is with the people who legally pass that legislation that enables it.
John Adams said in his famous quote: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” and I believe in that.
People who take advantage bad welfare policy, loopholes in taxes or subsidies in industries may be smart even if they are not moral, but it is NOT ONLY the MORAL task of elected officials to not approve bad welfare legislation, close tax loopholes left open, or not vote for those subsidies, it is their damned job to vote in bad welfare legislation, close those ‘unfair’ loopholes or not vote for those subsidies, and I hold THEM in the highest contempt, and ultimately responsible when they don’t do so.
And quite often, they don’t do so because they are personally profiting in some way from them, via bought off votes if not money flowing directly into their own pockets.
Part of that problem, for which there is no real answer I know of, is the people who benefit from the loopholes contributing campaign (and other) funds to the people who enable them.