You missed GP’s point. They were saying that the devs generally didn’t need to be convinced, it’s the business owners who did. Being that AMP dictates none of the bloatware, the business can’t steamroll their demands over the engineers.

Yes in that sense AMP is a business contact rather than a technical innovation. "Follow these rules and we'll tell users that we think your site is fast and maybe prioritise it in search results".

That's why you can't have a fast news site without it - because new site owners won't follow the rules needed to make their site fast unless they get something in return other than speed. Only AMP gives that.

If Google based is lightning bolt etc. on measured page speed instead then yes you might not need AMP. But they don't.