I’ll bite.

Yes, Amazon has created a more level playing field. However, they have done that not by filling in the valleys and low spots of the industry but rather by trying to plow the high spots down. Essentially, Amazon will not be content until the entire industry is at or below sea level 😉

How is Amazon stopping anyone else from trying to sell at “high spots”? If Amazon is capable of making a profit from selling at a lower point (and is presumably not using unfair tactics that would prevent others from doing the same) then it’s up to each consumer to decide whether to pay the lower or higher price.

Case in point, one of the Australian supermarket chains cut the price of their in-house brand of milk to just $2 for a 2-litre bottle – previously milk would sell at $3-6 for a 2-litre bottle, depending on the brand. There was a lot of uproar about undermining the independent grocers, and taking money out of the farmers’ pockets… but it turns out that the farmers were selling the milk at the same price, the discount came mostly out of the retailer’s pocket (and slightly out of the distributors’), and the retailer is still even making a profit from each bottle.

And personally, as a consumer I still buy the $3.50 milk, because I know it’s local and I can afford to do so. I’m grateful for the choice, but then I make my own decision for my own reasons.

Amazon doesn’t appear to be removing any choices from the market, they look to me more like they are adding choices to the market. Legacy publishers don’t like the new choices that consumers have, but they are welcome to continue in the vein they are used to, and let customers decide who they want to reward. Unfortunately for the customer (and for the author) authors aren’t quite as exchangeable as brands of milk, but across the market consumer trend certainly becomes apparent.

Seriously though, what Amazon is trying to do is go against human nature. We reward what is popular and we ignore what is not. A low price point for retail does not cause this by itself, but adding in a single price “all you can read” option certainly seems to be removing some of the reward factors.

What exactly is Amazon doing here that is going against human nature? Bezos started a business in a market segment that he thought was underserved by the incumbents, and through a more-or-less successful combination of experiments (which include a variety of tactics that upset quite a few different groups of people) he has grown Amazon into the popular choice which is rewarded by the people.

Note that Amazon is largely rewarded by the people because it gives them what they want (books) in a convenient fashion and at a good (competitive?) price. I guess it’s possible that Amazon is only appearing to act in the consumers’ (and self-published authors’) interests until it corners the whole market, then it will about-face and screw everyone over… but we already knew that the legacy publishing industry has done that for a long time, so we (authors and readers) probably won’t be any worse off than before Amazon started.

Writing, like being a musician, artist, or any other creative work doesn’t come with a guarantee of riches and wealth. It’s not a living wage job unless you work for someone else at a fixed rate (and they own your work).

Carpenters, jewellers, tailors… are all creative jobs that don’t come with guarantees of riches and wealth, and they don’t get to own the work either – their customers comes and buy the goods, then they have to make more. Your point?

I can understand writers who want to make a living wage on a consistent basis, but that just isn’t productive.

I can’t tell what you mean here. Writers who make a living wage on a consistent basis… aren’t productive? Or wanting to make a living wage on a consistent basis isn’t productive… but writing is? Surely without either wanting to write or wanting to make a living, there wouldn’t be any writing?

One of the greatest science fiction writers of our time is Philip K Dick. Understanding the motivations that made him hone his craft (fear of starvation, perhaps) is to understand the nature of the risk / reward system that is being an artist.

There’s a large number of writers who were very successful in their own time, and a large number of writers who were not successful in their own time (some of whom became wildly popular after they died). I’m certain that the motivation of all of those writers varies greatly, and I’d be very surprised if their motivation wasn’t completely orthogonal to their level of success.