
Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It? - ohjeez
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same-day/
======
quanticle
The article answers its own question. Amazon decides which neighborhoods get
Prime Same Day service by the number of Prime subscribers in that
neighborhood. Predominantly African-American neighborhoods have fewer Prime
subscribers, so they don't get Prime Same Day; presumably it would be even
less profitable to serve those neighborhoods than it is to offer Prime Same
Day to neighborhoods with high concentrations of Prime subscribers.

The article feels to me like a stretch. It isn't up to Amazon to solve racial
and income inequalities in the US. And, by all accounts, Prime Same Day isn't
a money-maker for Amazon. So the writers of this article are asking Amazon to
lose even more money in an effort to offer same-day deliveries to underserved
neighborhoods. It's a valid ask, but I won't be too outraged if Amazon
continues on its present course.

~~~
sliverstorm
Of course, there was that bit recently where some arm of the US gov't said
that discriminating based on criminal record might be illegal because
minorities have proportionately more criminal records, making discrimination
based on criminal record, racism. So I no longer know which way is up in
regards to this stuff.

~~~
tamana
Black people are more likely to be convicted of drug crimes even when they use
drugs at the same rates as white people. Similar for traffic crimes.

Many crimes are poverty-related theft for subsistence, which rich people never
need to be tempted with (as they get handouts from their parents) aren't
particularly relevant if someone gets a job that eliminates poverty. And
childhood poverty is correlated to race.

So yeah, screening by criminal record is intertwined with structural racism.

~~~
tmptmp
>>Many crimes are poverty-related theft for subsistence

Is poverty an acceptable justification for crimes? If yes, there are many
issues: how much poor one should be to justify this? how much rich the other
person (whom the poor one robbed) should be to justify this? What are the
acceptable reasons why the poor one remained poor in the first place? what
kind of reasons/ways how the rich become rich due to/using are acceptable to
make the rich person a right target for the society to accept his/her being
robbed by a poor is justifiable? What about the poor ones giving birth to
children when they know they cannot afford things, and then they rob others to
justify that they did this for their children and did so out of poverty? and
so on.

There are many, many such issues. I am not saying that there are not any
racism related issues but just trying to hide everything behind racism and/or
trying to sideline such issues is not going to help either the black people or
in general the USA.

edit: added more examples.

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cavisne
"White areas get organic grocers and designer boutiques" \- no faster way to
get out of poverty than shopping at Whole Foods

~~~
marincounty
The basics at WF's are reasonably priced. I want to hate stores, but the CEO
did a good job lowering prices on certain items. 1/2 gallon milk is $2.29.
Some bread is reasonable. Their store brand (nature someting) is a good deal.
They got a $2.49 bottle of wine that's a lost leader.

Everything else is priced for Thurston Howell III.

~~~
dmoy
Been a bit since I bought a gallon of milk, but I distinctly remember it being
<$3. How is $2.29 for a half gallon a reasonable price?

But then again, I also balk at paying >$1 for a loaf of bread so maybe I'm
just a cheapskate.

~~~
parenthephobia
Prices very significantly depending upon where you are.

Across the whole country, $2.29 is fairly average for a half-gallon, but in
Detroit the average is about $1.50.

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lusen
I'm disappointed though not surprised by comments suggesting that Amazon only
pay attention to their bottom line. Why _shouldn 't_ they do more for racial
inequality? That's just as meaningful as $$. Powerful corporations are more
and more like governments -- they _should_ be looking out for us, and we
_should_ be asking them to.

Why not raise our standards?

~~~
Snargorf
You're proposing that Amazon's employees, customers, and shareholders pay out
of their pockets to fund your social engineering project.

How about this instead: You get together with a bunch of your social justice-y
friends, pool a few hundred million dollars, then offer it to Amazon, on the
condition that they start serving these neighborhoods.

Everyone wins! The only difference is that now _you_ are the one who has to
pay for your virtue-signaling social crusade. But you're cool with that right?

~~~
flashman
Hmm. Amazon puts a few pennies extra onto my items, and poor communities get
access to a service that's much cheaper than shopping at a convenience store?
Freeing up their capital to spend elsewhere in the economy, like on products
and services my company offers?

Where do I sign up?

~~~
Snargorf
Great! Hey lusen - you've got a guy here willing to pay _a few pennies_ to the
social justice virtue signaling fund!

This guy really puts his money where is mouth is!

Just find a billion more people at his level of commitment and you'll be
golden.

~~~
flashman
Sarcasm aside, what's a few pennies per sale on $105bn in sales?

~~~
jasonpeacock
Because Amazon's profit is only a few pennies per sale.

You're basically asking Amazon to double their profit margin by raising
prices, and then give away half of it to fix social injustice?

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jsnk
How about Amazon just focus on maximizing profit within the boundary of the
law of the given area?

~~~
omonra
That would be racist.

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forrestthewoods
No.

That was easy. Next question?

~~~
zhemao
Not only that, the article doesn't even consider the question posed in the
title.

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tjl
They're also pretty bad at rolling out their services to countries outside of
the US. In Canada we've been told that we're getting Amazon's MP3 music store
for years, but it still hasn't come, let alone any Amazon video. I'm actually
somewhat surprised that we got Kindle books, although that was years after the
US. You can forget things like the Echo at all.

Amazon Prime is just shipping in Canada. Where I live, I'd get shipments about
a day sooner than free shipping so it's not worth it for me.

~~~
frik
Amazon is also pretty bad with services in Europe. Amazon Germany is used to
try out new services and was also the test region for Prime years before
Amazon US got it. The Prime advertisement and nag screens are so annoying on
Amazon Germany, so many now many use Amazon UK and US which have a far better
user experience and things are cheaper as well. The packages come from the
same warehouses anyway. And Amazon Germany's warehouse label now all packages
with a Prime package. And the package come on the next day. (Due to
introducing Prime as testing object in Germany many years ago, the delivered
slowed down from 2-3 days to 4-6 days for any non-Prime member) Maybe it's the
fault of their chaos. No wonder the Amazon Germany webshop is running on an
years old software version, with good but long gone features like sorting
items by lower prize or popularity, but otherwise rotten experience. It used
to run on the 1999-ish version until 2006 or so, basically unchanged. The US
version got several new relaunches back then. If an Amazon exec reads this,
please do your A/B tests and product testing somewhere else and scrap the old
forked codebase of Amazon Germany.

------
known
AMZN can take a clue from
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-
wo...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-worlds-
racist-countries-answers-surprise-you.html)

------
nacs
Duplicate of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11541612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11541612)
(4 days ago)

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Dr_tldr
My god, how could anyone be expected to overcome poverty and inequality
without same-day prime delivery? Sure there's still two-day prime delivery
that the majority of Amazon Prime members of all races have, but clearly
that's no different than the grim inequality of segregated water fountains and
poll taxes.

The implied conclusion is that a business should do something that loses them
revenue if the alternative is a vague insinuation of structural racism. By
this same logic, luxury car dealerships should build their showrooms in inner-
city ghettos and rural areas because everyone has a right to test drive a
Ferrari, economics be damned.

~~~
flashman
That's a bit of a reductio ad absurdum. Same-day Prime service is a bit of a
luxury now, but so was internet access twenty years ago. Widespread internet
access has had many positive economic effects in poor communities. Better
Prime access may do to the same, as the article says, by increasing the range
of available goods and reducing their prices - both positive effects in poor
communities.

~~~
Dr_tldr
This is equivalent to an article arguing that 50 mb/s internet isn't fast
enough and every community should be offered 100 mb/s internet, even if doing
so causes large net losses to the providers.

They don't produce any evidence that the difference between one day and two
day shipping has a negative impact on people's ability to increase the amount
of available goods and obtain them at lower prices. Is there some mysterious
perishable, necessary good that can only be ordered 24 hours in advance that
unlocks upward mobility?

~~~
tmptmp
Great response Dr_tldr. One day vs two day shipping should not even be an
issue to whine about. Tomorrow these socialist-minded activists may demand
many such things (same day delivery, 1gbps internet and so on) in the name of
social good and these they demand invariably at the cost of other businesses
and other people. They should do that on their own. Besides, anything given
for free isn't much appreciated by the receivers too.

Even the government should be cautious, as too much of tax money spent on
"such social" projects is not much good for the society as a whole. UK welfare
system is a good example how bad such "social" projects can be for the
society.

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zkhalique
Betteridge's law.

~~~
yompers888
And an incredibly lazy iteration of it, at that. Business Week was much better
reading before Bloomberg bought it.

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jtchang
Clearly Amazon.com is racist.

