Am I the only one that would love to work there, under those conditions, for a year or two? It may kill me but there are a couple things that specifically turn me on: 1. Being expected and being surrounded by people who are expected to be better than they are. 2. Being surrounded by people in general who aren't simply skating by, doing the minimum required to not be noticed. That's right. The people at my old job who pissed me off weren't the people who were doing their job to the minimum passable standard. It was the ones who were more focused on getting the minimum amount done so management wouldn't notice their existence, which often was completely unrelated to whether the task at hand got done. 3. Actually being part of something that does something instead of something that sells shit that no one needs (or wants)
You are grossly underestimating the loss of agency. You wouldn't be busting ass on a project of your own invention, towards your own goals, as a key member of a team dedicated to something miraculous. You'd be a replaceable cog doing a tiny thing as part of a big system that doesn't give the first fuck about you. Amazon doesn't expect you "to be better" than you are. They expect you to surrender your life to their goals. As far as "being part of something that does something" you aren't serious, are you? The only non anti-competitive innovations Amazon has ever come up with are a talking bluetooth speaker and a phone that sold worse than the Zune. Even the Kindle is a shitshow and I own 3; if it weren't for Amazon's anti-trust-worthy ecosystem that thing would be a bigger joke than the Nook.
I don't disagree with a single thing you're saying. I will point out that just getting the fucking subtitle files to work with some anime that you can't even buy in Plex is such a headache that I understand why people put up with Apple TV. I mean, I shouldn't have to get command line just to read english. And that's Amazon's big play - I can go from "looking at this book" to "reading this book" in two clicks.
I just want to point out that I'm not one of those assholes who feel entitled to media through torrents. I bought Stoner for the introduction that wasn't in the ePub I torrented. I like physical media. I like having a a handsome bookshelf and DVD collection. I'm also poor so I buy a lot of stuff from Goodwill and no one but Goodwill benefits from that. You're not accusing me of being an entitled cunt who's excusing stealing but I'm in the parking lot of the grocery store and it's pouring so I'm typing this on my phone while waiting for the rain to let up. And those kids who want to rationalize stealing generally piss me off. Alright I'm about to get wet.
Yeah, I like to buy fire when I can. Except Kindle Fire. To reframe the argument, sometimes I buy fire that burns me. I don't like spending money to get burned. I'd rather learn upfront with no investment which fire warms me, then pay the person who ignited that fire out of gratitude. That's what I try to do.
The anime that I can't get to behave in Plex? I stole the shit out of it. And will continue to do so. So long as the industry fails to provide me with a reasonable way to consume media, I will consume it unreasonably. That's my larger point - Amazon "works" on a kindle standpoint because they've got a seamless ecosystem. On movies? Total shitshow. Music? Total, total shitshow. Neither shitshow compares to my Patlabor adventures, however, or the fact that I needed to download subtitles for Genesis Climber Mospeada from Russia because in the US it's just Series III of Robotech. And yeah - I rented that shit on Netflix back when discs made sense... but fuckin' Apple managed to disable my DVD player with Yosemite so really, a plague on both their houses. I totally feel entitled to media through torrents, and I make a substantial living generating media. Why? because if you can't figure out a reasonable way to sell it to me, I'm going to steal it. That's basic fucking economics.