You're taking "Human resources" a bit too literally.
In your case, yes, you were absolutely a resource. This is exactly why companies of that size simply shouldn't exist - because they cannot not treat their employees as resources, with all the inhumanity this implies.
And again, work is a transaction. I’m perfectly fine with being treated as a resource when I was getting a quarter million a year and working remotely…
But, more importantly, a company that large is simply too much concentrated economic power (which then translates to political power). Even if it was all just robots, I'd still say no. Our political system is in shambles in large part because of these kinds of entities.
Our politics is in shambles because of religious nutcases, anti science, anti intellectuals, who are afraid of the country becoming majority-minority and straight out racism and bitterness.
Amazon has nothing to do with that.
Amazon didn’t have any significant lobbying 20 years ago and it definitely was the behemoth it is today. That being said, even today it isn’t as large as Walmart and was definitely not a large retailer back then.
It was seriously in doubt 20 years ago whether Amazon would ever survive and definitely wasn’t consistently profitable.
However, I would be very surprised if they weren't lobbying heavily to keep said exemption for as long as possible.