But in a global economy, who cares about being intelligent or being good at anything unless you already also inherit? Inheritance is the best way forward to economic success, and failing that companies are primarily interested in obedience. In a globalized hypercapitalist free-trade economy you compete with other potential workers for jobs based on how willing you are to be exploited and abused, not how intelligent/competent you are -- in this context I think soul-crushing busywork is exactly what students need to prepare them for what's to come.
If every company were Amazon sure, but they aren't. There are tons of companies out there looking for passionate people who actually give a fuck about what they're building, not just looking to earn a paycheck. Yes there are plenty of profit centers willing to sell you out to the lowest bidder but that's far from the entire professional landscape.
Either that or you live/work in a really awful area.
Sure there are. For now. Amazon et al are acquiring them one by one.
A market economy is a massive optimization process; an extraordinarily useful tool that we, the people, can deploy to achieve our goals. Forget this for too long, convince yourself that the market is inherently superior to human ethics, and it starts optimizing us for things we don't care about, or things that actively hurt us, expanding to fill the regulatory container we built for it. Then it starts to try and exert force to reshape that container.
Market fundamentalists that came into vogue in the US around 40-50 years ago have thoroughly destroyed progress in many areas of human development for the people of this country. "But they're not all like that" actively serves their interests by asserting that it's not quirks of the system we've crafted creating these incentives, it's simply a chance occurrence at a single company.
