I just meant to differentiate it from people at Amazon going "Let's cheat the publishers out of their royalty!" Of course that might be what happened, but it would surprise me. If you want to think of not hiring enough people to do the work that's required as greedy - then I think it's fair to call greed as the source of the problem.
Another element of this that cuts against "greed" as the motivator in my mind is that it isn't like anyone who would implement the details here would give a hoot if Amazon went plus or minus ten million dollars (or whatever the amount is). If you are the leaf node in the org chart making the exchange of money happen then you will get paid the same regardless of what happens. There may be some big boss guy somewhere who cares about that number, but he doesn't have the ability to actually do the cheating, he'd have to order someone else to do it. Again, maybe that's what happened, but it just seems unlikely to me as it would be so easy for the people receiving those orders to go "Hmmm, no, I don't think so."
"Let's cheat the publishers out of their royalty!"
is greed and:
"Let's save money creating the services we provide, almost certainly at the cost of our customers in order to be more profitable"
is not?
"in my mind is that it isn't like anyone who would implement the details here would give a hoot if Amazon went plus or minus ten million dollars"
in that case I'd argue it's a massive management failure on Amazon to have a bunch of people working for them that do not care about the consequences of their actions. To labor my previous metaphor: somehow the radiation machine manufacturer finds a way to get its employees to care that their products work as intended.
And while I agree it would be morally worse if they were intentionally bilking customers (be it content producers or listeners), sins-of-omission are very real as well. You're right that $10mio are nothing to Amazon, but $10k could easily be the difference between wild success of an independent audio book creator and their financial ruin.
Another element of this that cuts against "greed" as the motivator in my mind is that it isn't like anyone who would implement the details here would give a hoot if Amazon went plus or minus ten million dollars (or whatever the amount is). If you are the leaf node in the org chart making the exchange of money happen then you will get paid the same regardless of what happens. There may be some big boss guy somewhere who cares about that number, but he doesn't have the ability to actually do the cheating, he'd have to order someone else to do it. Again, maybe that's what happened, but it just seems unlikely to me as it would be so easy for the people receiving those orders to go "Hmmm, no, I don't think so."