It's likely the reason we don't have opposable toes anymore is that our transition to bipedalism selected for feet which were more suited for increased load bearing. Other features would have been lost if they were less essential.

Maybe all of these companies with higher profit margins than Amazon should be reinvesting more of those profits towards their long term viability instead of fixating on quarterly earnings and shareholder dividends. These companies have the resources to compete, they're just afraid of the disruption it'll cause and investors tanking their stock because their growth was a few tenths of a percent off of what they predicted.

Yeah, Amazon tried something similar with the Fire Phone and look how that turned out...

It is also about confidence. Particularly for athletes, politicians and other performers, mental conditioning and feeling confident are really important, especially at the highest levels. I grew up around hockey players, who are known for their superstitions and weird pregame rituals they have. I've also seen the difference confidence can make in the performance of an individual who is objectively very good. Most of these people know that putting your left sock on before the right doesn't REALLY make a difference in the grand scheme of things, but they do it anyway because it gets them in the right mindset to perform at their best.

In another article it's claimed that they've solved this problem through a combination of a special scalpel to make very clean cuts of the nerves, and polyethylene glycol which promotes healing. They've only tried it on mice though.