How anyone can say this with a straight face blows my mind when even in the tech vertical he has some serious competition (are we forgetting about Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc.), let alone actual historical figures like Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, etc.
His goals, at least, are ambitious in a way that those of the other people you mentioned aren't (except possibly Bezos, but Bezos doesn't laser focus on this stuff the same way Musk does).
Elon is the only person to ever start four 1bn+ companies (paypal, tesla, SpaceX, Solarcity). He has/is driving innovation across multiple industries on a time scale that I don't think any of the people you mentioned can really touch, not to mention hyperloop and the Boring Company. Its not even debatable IMO.
He didn't start Tesla. He was retroactively allowed to be called founder after being in their Series A.
He didn't start Paypal. It merged with Musk's company.
He didn't start Solarcity - Tesla acquired it 10 years after it was founded.
Or Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the guy who started the Dutch East India company, which adjusted for inflation was worth over $8.2 trillion.
Modern companies have nothing on what entrepreneurs did in the past and how much money they made. It doesn't matter how many markets Elon Musk "disrupts" nothing he can do will ever match the impact that the Dutch East India company had on the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company
Yeah, it's amazing what those guys could get away with back in the days of slavery and before regulation. /sarcasm
"The company has been criticised for its monopolistic policy, exploitation, colonialism, uses of violence, and slavery."
I'm pretty sure many of the today's companies would do just as well or even better if they could have their own military force and free ticket on slavery.
Granted, DEIC is in a league of its own, but it was also a state sponsored company, more akin to Saudi-ARAMCO (2T).
