While Elon Musk says some stupid stuff sometimes, he has some wisdom with respect to quality and merit and one reason is that instead of being an overseer-type that tells other people to do stuff without knowing how to do it himself (see Bill Burr's bit on Steve Jobs), Musk is an engineer that does and understands engineering and another reason is that Musk grew up in a dump of a country and as a result he isn't blind to the good things about the US, unlike some that grew up here and take them for granted.