Full anti-Musk freakout mode

I've been re-reading with pleasure a John Ringo 2010 scifi adventure called "Live Free or Die," about a one-man engineering/entrepreneurial powerhouse's effort to combat an extraterrestrial invasion. It's an enjoyable romp, but on this reading I'm noticing a remarkable pre-figuring of the Elon Musk phenomenon.

When the action starts, hostile aliens have emerged through a galactic gate and cratered Earth's economy by demanding all its heavy metals as tribute. Our hero is a down-on-his luck ex-IT engineer who makes ends meet by multiple odd jobs. The hostile aliens being only one of the alien races in contact with Earth, the hero takes a stab at finding any non-heavy-metal terrestrial product that might interest the friendlier ETs, and stumbles by luck on a substance that has an irresistable psychic effect on them.

Abruptly the richest man in the world, the hero quickly applies his new leverage to master alien technology, resist the bad-guy ETs, and launch mankind into a new era. Naturally he incurs the wrath of government bureaucrats and the press in a way that quite sharply resembles the current anti-Musk clown show. This book being written before iPhones (to judge by the references to Blackberries as the ultimate in net-linked accessories), Ringo is unlikely to have had Musk in mind, but it's great fun to see how good his guesses were. That's one of my favorites parts of scifi, anyway, seeing which authors guessed trends early. Bonus points if the author is one of the few conservative free-market enthusiasts publishing in the field.

"Live Free or Die" follows the basic Heinlein juvenile-series formula: the protagonist is posited as Everyman, but of course is unusually bright, self-directed, trained in basic science in engineering, and Boy Scout to the core. Plunged into conflict, he rises to the occasion, vaulting through level after higher level of influence and crisis, until he saves the world. A good example is the highly entertaining "Have Space Suit--Will Travel," a book I'll never get tired of.