I recently discovered https://lekh.app which uses web assembly. I had a conversation with the developer and he told me that he is using web assembly for the core diagramming and shape recognition logic. The app is for diagramming and whiteboarding.
The whole diagramming and AI (to recognize shapes) is compiled into ~1M of web assembly.
I am not surprised by your calculation. Amazon has to earn from the service it provides. It is not on the basis of no-loss no-gain.
It is well known that the EC2 is great if you have to quick start your system without worrying about the hardware infra. It is also good for initial quick scaling. And it is good to some extent of scaling after that it is not advisable? If would be cheap, then why not other big companies will use amazon rather than managing their own data center?
80 pct seems to be exaggerated. I live in India and have seems big cities to small villages. I know that big population lives on half dollar a day but not 80%
Vice-Versa is also true. There are few things that universities are good at, most of the professionals are not. I don't think it is wise to compare universities with professionals.
There is similar pattern in other type of industries too.. As you grow in the career path, you move more towards management role.
If you write code, most of the time you spend on very small part of a big software. Your impact is very less on the overall product. Being an architect, you have more impact on the product