I think you're strawmaning Musk's popularity. People aren't fantasizing about living his life, they're adoring him for building the future that a lot of people

I think you're strawmaning Musk's popularity. People aren't fantasizing about living his life, they're adoring him for building the future that a lot of people want to live to see. Honestly, philanthropy should not be the main concern of billionaires. They should put their money and expertise to work running and funding businesses that have a direct impact on people's lives. Throwing money at problems is an incredibly inefficient and wasteful way to solve them since it more often than not gets vacuumed up by intermediaries and managerial bloat. If you really want to fix something you need to do the work yourself. Gates is actually quite good at this because he's very hands on, he personally researches (as in actually learns the science behind things) and visits the companies and orgs that he donates to. Guess what, that's also Musk's approach. The only difference is that Gates is retired with little interest in starting new companies, Musk is still young enough that he's in the thick of it managing his existing companies and occasionally starting a new one. That's what people with the means to should be doing, rolling up their sleeves and grappling with the problems themselves not throwing bags of money over a wall and hoping it lands on someone competent.