
Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It? - 1wheel
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same-day/
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nacs
Pretty sensationalist article. The important parts are buried about halfway
through:

> Amazon, he says, has a “radical sensitivity” to any suggestion that
> neighborhoods are being singled out by race. “Demographics play no role in
> it. Zero.”

> Amazon says its plan is to focus its same-day service on ZIP codes where
> there’s a high concentration of Prime members

The areas Amazon does same-day delivery are likely just driven by pure numbers
and algorithms -- larger order counts/sums will result in a higher chance of
same-day delivery to a certain area and low numbers for an area means it will
get it later.

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Terretta
This may be correlation, but their own data doesn't look like causation.

For example, they talk about the "hole" in Boston with blacks carved out.

They don't talk about the hole in Dallas with whites carved out. In Dallas,
compare the depiction of the hole on left vs. right. On the right they delete
the whites (green dots) so it looks like nobody's in the hole. On the left,
the hole is almost solid green, clearly invalidating the thesis.

They interview blacks in the Boston hole, but not whites in the Dallas hole,
and nobody in L.A. where a higher % of blacks are served by same day Prime
than whites.

I'm comfortable with a combination of two straightforward factors: where are
Prime subscribers, and, where are the warehouses and package delivery hubs?

Prime and FedEx both likely have correlation to % of folks happy to pay $23
for a letter today vs $0.50 next week, and where you can put a warehouse and
shipping hub to best logistically serve those folks, with Prime having a bias
towards residential density and FedEx a bias towards commercial.

~~~
HeGoogledIt
Except the "hole" in Dallas is not Dallas. It's Highland Park and University
Park, Texas, two completely separately governed areas from the City of Dallas.
But keep that tin foil hat handy.

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nickpsecurity
There's two things the article doesn't consider enough which might be
important:

1\. Road access

2\. Crime

The first is a lesser concern but does affect deliveries. An area with easy
access to highways and truck-worthy roads is easier to do economical
deliveries in. Some areas have roads that can't take trucks due to clearance,
quality of road itself, weight limits on wooden bridges, stupid GPS routes,
and so on. Fixing that stuff up helps.

The second, crime, is a major concern. This article starts being less shocking
when you replace "mostly black or latino" with "high chance of being robbed,
raped, or murdered." I cant speak to all their examples but many jump right
out. The blacks I know from Chicago say the South-side is "the hood all over
it." All of them have said that. Then the Bronx shows up of course. Also parts
of Atlanta where crime is highest and a few thugs I had the displeasure of
meeting. Kicked their ass back to Georgia. All areas where a company vehicle
and/or driver is likely to get robbed with the driver maybe being straight-up
_murdered_. And for almost no money since it's low-income areas.

 _That_ might factor into their analysis. Wisely so as almost nobody in the
murder capital I live in wants to deliver to the hood even though plenty do
(eg Dominos pizza or Jimmy Johns) because they need a job. A number of those
report the occasional gun to their head to get a free product with manager
blacklisting that house. Stories like that go around business to business,
driver to driver. A truck stolen for $80,000 losses does too. Compare it to
the white neighborhoods where people just don't get robbed at gunpoint
delivering a pizza. Rarely if ever.

It's perfectly reasonable to refuse to deliver to high-crime areas until they
get their shit under control. Neighborhoods need to start standing up for
their own and ejecting people like that. Enough of that happening will let the
companies differentiate more between safe and unsafe neighborhoods that are
low-income. Then, companies might come back to them. Meanwhile, companies
reduce their losses greatly by not showing up.

Note: I've turned down multiple, high-paying jobs because I'd have to waste
too much money on security or insurance. Because they were in the hood. And,
yes, there's articles about those same locations just like this talking about
how avoidance happens because they're black or Latino. No, it's because we'd
rather not die, buy another smartphone, or go to the DMV again cuz assholes
take the license. Stuff that doesn't happen in poor, mostly-white parts of my
area. They just steal gas, burglarize empty houses, sell weed/meth, and so on.
Stuff that won't kill me outside the occasional thug solo or pair. 2nd
Amendment works fine for that as it's not 15-20 person gang all at once like
in the hoods.

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CameronBanga
Quick! To the Betteridge-mobile!

