Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It? • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?

#31

Post by Snargorf » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 7:31 AM UTC

flashman wrote: post #28

Snargorf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

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.

Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?

#32

Post by Snargorf » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 7:31 AM UTC

dogecoinbase wrote: post #29

Snargorf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Virtue-signaller, know thyself.

Inigo Montoya

Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?

#33

Post by parenthephobia » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 10:05 AM UTC

dmoy wrote: post #21

marincounty wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Been a bit since I bought a gallon of milk, but I distinctly remember it being But then again, I also balk at paying >$1 for a loaf of bread so maybe I'm just a cheapskate.

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.

Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?

#34

Post by flashman » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 10:15 AM UTC

Snargorf wrote: post #31

flashman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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

Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?

#35

Post by jasonpeacock » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 2:28 PM UTC

flashman wrote: post #34

Snargorf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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?

Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?

#36

Post by ajkjk » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 2:37 PM UTC

flashman wrote: post #34

Snargorf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

A huge percentage (perhaps the entirety?) of their margins?

Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?

#37

Post by tmptmp » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 4:09 PM UTC

tamana wrote: post #23

sliverstorm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 yea…

>>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.

Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?

#38

Post by tmptmp » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

Dr_tldr wrote: post #30

flashman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 mys…

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.