Why do you think Elon Musk is obviously different? He's definitely had many events where he has lied about aspects of his business. You could argue that it doesn't matter now that he has built something real, but that's down to a lot of luck, not ethical backbone.
Musk has built many things over the past Many years. Though he may talk about even more, bringing EVs to the masses and creating reusable rockets is something he deserves full credit for. It has nothing to do with ethics. A rational person would not equate Musk with Milton.
Not equate, realize that they are both part of a pattern.
We also should not let Elon Musk's actions only be evaluated in their totality. We can argue about the net sum of his contributions, but it should be fundamentally irrelevant to evaluating any individual one. He shouldn't lie or allow fraud. His actions with the Solar Roof launch, Boring Company, Self Driving, and funding tweets all cross ethical lines that we as a country need to make clear are not what we want from our business leaders.
The fact that Tesla is not entirely vapourware doesn't mean that Musk hasn't lied or even committed fraud to get here. Lying to investors to fund a billion dollar company that is actually worth a few hundred million is not that different from funding one that is worth 0 dollars.
