well, his (valid) point is, that arguably most of this planet inahbitants would do anything possible to get a job like that, for even half the income. which is true. just we in IT and developers in particular are in these days amazingly spoiled, full of this feeling that we are some engineer++, more clever, and generally better than say construction engineers (or any other for that matter). back home we have a saying "pride precedes the fall", and honestly, software development is in dire need for some proper disruption (ie jobs amount and salaries take 50% cut).
once you step outside of your little bubble and look how hard it is for real people out there to earn their crappy salaries, come back and we can talk like adults.
With this attitude, so long as there are people worse off you never have a right to complain; if more people believed the way you do we would all race to the bottom into functional slavery, because, hey, some people are actual slaves, or dying on the street, or permanently disabled who am I to complain about working for 3 cents a year? Some people would kill for that job.
Luckily almost nobody outside of weird extremist libertarian communities on the internet that you find odd pockets of on HN and such believe this.
It's okay to be a sociopath to people so long as others have it worse?
No, sorry. Nothing requires Amazon to behave this way, and it is foolish besides - if you burn through people you are are basically training people up who then walk away and work for your competition. By having them work 80+ hours you are getting less actual work out of them then 40 hours. You are spending more on health care because this sort of environment causes stress. Etc.
We ain't going to shut up and take it just because there are worse things out there.
I find it interesting that one one hand we have people talking about how software developers are entitled cry-babies, and then there are others who say that software developers are horrible at negotiating salary and benefits, ending up woefully under-compensated for the value that we bring to employers.
"well, his (valid) point is, that arguably most of this planet inahbitants would do anything possible to get a job like that, for even half the income."
Until they get the job, realize that pain is everywhere, and pray their children won't have to go through the same thing.
Destroying your employees doesn't suddenly become a sustainable way of running the human race just because you're destroying them in front of a computer screen instead of in a rice field.
It was clear in what context I have written my comment. Your argument can be qualified as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum