And they need to compete with others on this "game" who pursue the calculus of power.

Such compulsions are a function of lacking the kind of emotional fortitude I’m referring to.

Spineless people of poor character “need” to pursue upward movement along the gradient of power.

The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, “If you learned to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.”

Said Diogenes, “If you learned to live on lentils, you would not have to be subservient to the king.”

but above average intelligence

Maybe once. But that much Ketamine, plus his advanced age and excessive social media exposure, has degraded his ability to process information substantively.

He does have knowledge about rockets on a non-engineering level

He has prepared statements to read to a friendly interviewer. That's PR, not intelligence.

Besides the focus of all education towards profit seeking, technical nerds also seem to “want to” see other fields like sociology or politics or history in a simple and easy to explain way.

Musk isn't technical, he's a finance bro. And while I agree there's a strong "Education should be about making money" propaganda wave, I've noticed a lot of backtracking on this any time some group of labor activists starts passing around the financial reports of the publicly traded company to their coworkers. Then, all of a sudden, the finance bros become obsessed with sociology, politics, and history, at least in so far as they keep shouting and pointing to Venezuela any time someone at the firm mentions the company health care policy.

My point was not just about Musk but about the idea of “finding the smartest people to rule”. Because to anybody who is above intelligence that sounds smart except - stupidity can be more dangerous in intelligent people.

The fixation on "intelligence" as a discrete and quantifiable measure is what bothers me more than anything. I like to look at track records more than hypothetical quantifiers. Even if Elon were a "genius", I won't particularly appreciate the pro-eugenics track that brain power has sent him.

But I find it particularly galling when people conflate intelligence and success. So much of the modern economic system is about who you know rather than what you know. Elon Musk had access to enormous amounts of cheap credit, which he used to take a series of highly profitable gambles. He then leveraged his winnings to pull on more cheap credit.

Even setting aside whether that's "smart" or "stupid", I would say its a reflection of statistical probability. There are thousands of guys like Elon. Some make it, others don't. But what defines Elon in the end is simply luck. Recognizing him as exceptionally fortunate, rather than exceptionally smart or savvy, means pealing off the layers of PR and revealing the human underneath.