Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or maybe people want him to fail for the same reason they want someone like Martin Shkreli or Kanye West to fail: because he's bad for society.
Really? It's hard to imagine him doing anything at this point that would offset the good he's done for society. He upset and tore down the military-industrial complex launch monopoly saving the collective US tax payers billions through starting SpaceX (and could soon revolutionize access to space for the average person within the next decade). (Also note that without SpaceX, we'd still be paying money to Russia to se…
I actually suspect that many people hate him not in spite of what he has done, but because of it:
They think if they acknowledge what people like Elon Musk have done in their lives, they'd have to loathe themselves, their own choices, values and weaknesses.
Which is, of course, quite silly. Each human being has their own path in life. Comparing yourself to anyone, no matter who, is going to cause misery. But with people like Elon, the threat to the ego is particularly great.
So, hate and schadenfreude are the easy way out. "He, too, makes mistakes. So I'm not that worthless after all".
(The irony being that many of these people say that Elon Musk is self-centered. Though the question he is asking is "What do I believe is greatest good to humanity as a species", whereas they, by their very act of comparing themselves to him, are asking "How can I be greater than and more right than Elon Musk".)
