Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11541612 (4 days ago)
Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
11–20 of 38 posts
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#12The 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 P…
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.
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#13I'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?
Because it's nonsense. I was raised in an upper middle class but community but even today Amazon doesn't do same day delivery to my neighborhood because I lived out in the country. We had to drive 10 miles to be able to buy anything.
The nearest Whole Foods is 51 miles away.
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#14Betteridge's law.
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#15AMZN can take a clue from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-wo...
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#16The 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 P…
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.
I think the overall point should be that no way is clearly up -- it seems obvious that corporations shouldn't be forced to act unprofitably, but not only does that often reinforce systemic racism (in this case), you end up with e.g. insurers shouldn't have to cover preexisting conditions, felons should be permanently out of a job (and thus essentially forced back into crime), et cetera. Or should that be the government's role, and how do we reconcile that with the common wisdom that private enterprise is more efficient (or desirable)?
These are complex, subtle issues. The most important thing is to distrust anyone telling you that the answer is "obvious", which so far is most of this HN thread.
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#17I'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?
Because it's nonsense. I was raised in an upper middle class but community but even today Amazon doesn't do same day delivery to my neighborhood because I lived out in the country. We had to drive 10 miles to be able to buy anything. The nearest Whole Foods is 51 miles away.
Still, there's a difference between not delivering to a place that's out in the boonies with a low population, and not delivering to a place that is literally completely surrounded by places you do deliver to.
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#18No. That was easy. Next question?
Not only that, the article doesn't even consider the question posed in the title.
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#19"White areas get organic grocers and designer boutiques" - no faster way to get out of poverty than shopping at Whole Foods
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.
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#20Betteridge's law.
And an incredibly lazy iteration of it, at that. Business Week was much better reading before Bloomberg bought it.