The apparent existence of the emerald mine does put some shade on musk's purely "self-made" story. Even though, in reality, no one is truly, completely self made. But Musk has fully denied the existence of an emerald mine. But now his father confirmed it. So I don't think we can trust Musk's account here and I'm not sure we can trust his father's. So I think it remains to be seen how much family money supported Elon while he became "self-made".
The evidence we have is his father claiming to have helped his sons out to the tune of $115k and said father becoming essentially bankrupt in the 90s.
The Emerald mine denial was shady and dishonest, Elon probably thinking he can get away with it as "technically correct" because there was no actual mine that anyone can point to, just paying locals for any emeralds they have found lying around.
Elon seems about as self made as you can get in the USA, with the approximate amount of support you'd expect from an upper middle class family (helping pay for college and a small $28k business loan).
