[HN Gopher] Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
___________________________________________________________________
Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
Author : EwanToo
Score : 166 points
Date : 2020-02-01 08:06 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| rcarmo wrote:
| My father was a diamond cutter (one of the folk who designed the
| modern "Portuguese cut" of the 70s) and he went through the
| evolution of diamond cutting from abrasion with copper disks (for
| cutting windows and facets) to laser cuts.
|
| I distinctly remember going into the (then state-owned) workshops
| as a kid and watching the cutters at work with their loupes, and
| how they kept tabs on stones by checking in and out of the vaults
| little envelopes annotated with each step of the process - it was
| true craftsmanship.
|
| Biggest stone I "saw" (they did resin molds of the large ones for
| senior cutters to measure and mark the places for clamping and
| cutting, and my father would bring some models home to study and
| review other cutters' suggestions) was about 2x2x3cm, and IIRC it
| was cut down into many smaller ones due to impurities (you'd cut
| a window to peer in, assess where the impurities were and then
| plan the cuts to excise them or avoid including them into the
| finished cut).
|
| The techniques are sure to be vastly different today, but the
| detachment with which he viewed his work was rather fun: they
| were intricate puzzles to maximize yield during the rough cut
| phase and reflectiveness during the shaping phase - they did the
| math by hand for the facet sizes and angles, and it took years to
| figure out the best ways to do some of the shaping in a
| reproducible fashion (that was his key achievement).
|
| And all that time, they were "just pretty rocks". He was very
| nonchalant about it, and never considered them of much value.
| DeBeers tried to hire him and he pretty much said he was done
| with the hype (rather amusing considering I'm about his age at
| the time and also fed up with our industry hype).
|
| (Also, if you read Michael Crichton's "Congo", he got the diamond
| color names wrong)
| rcarmo wrote:
| Also, a note on the humanitarian side of things, but not
| directly related to mining: When the Portuguese colonies
| seceded in the 70s, many people returned or emigrated to
| Portugal with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and
| "diamonds" they had exchanged their farms and real estate for.
|
| I remember a few dinner conversations about how a few of them
| came to my father to assess the value of those stones, and most
| were chunks of quartz or other worthless crystals.
|
| I think some of those conversations were really tough, and one
| of the reasons he disconnected from work as much as he could
| (his hobby was electronics, and one of the reasons I got into
| computers was that he brought a Sinclair ZX81 from London after
| years of putting together various kits, including a HeathKit
| oscilloscope).
|
| So, in a way, diamonds are the reason I do what I do these
| days.
| primity wrote:
| I come from one of those families. My grandfather came back
| to Portugal from Angola soon after the war started.
| Unfortunately, he never got to trade his possessions for
| diamonds, so they had essentially their clothes.
| olliswe wrote:
| I currently live in Sierra Leone working as a software dev, and
| just came back from an evening jog around the largest diamond
| mine in West Africa. It's crazy how much pain an misery diamonds
| have caused to this country. The citizens here in Koidu don't get
| any of the income of the diamonds, and live it extreme poverty...
| Meanwhile the guys from De Beers are living bougie lives in their
| maximum security compounds, with a pool, western supermarket and
| bar.
| pinkfoot wrote:
| > The citizens here in Koidu don't get any of the income of the
| diamonds.
|
| Surely the issue of where and how minimg licences and sales
| revenue is distributed in SL, is something the folk of Koidu
| should take up with their government.
|
| As with any company anyehere, De Beers pays the share they are
| obliged to to the authorities.
| grecy wrote:
| > _As with any company anyehere, De Beers pays the share they
| are obliged to to the authorities_
|
| BP and Facebook aren't paying their share of taxes in the
| USA, do you think De Beers is going to do so in Sierra Leone?
|
| The only difference is there are _just_ enough tax dollars in
| the US to make life tolerable for the masses - cheap beer &
| cigarettes, sports on TV and elementary education.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I still wish I'd discovered Moissanite before I got married. The
| rock would have been multiples larger and I'd have the
| satisfaction of not contributing to a monopolistic and
| exploitative industry.
| jseliger wrote:
| There has been more noise around lab-grown diamonds as of late:
| https://qz.com/630512/would-you-propose-with-a-diamond-
| grown....
| turing_incomp wrote:
| A pricing comparison based on real data:
| https://blog.onetruerock.com/blog/LabvsEarth
|
| The site was previously on ShowHN. I was in the process of
| looking a few months ago and found the overview of how the
| market works interesting:
| https://blog.onetruerock.com/blog/OneTrueRockValue
| anonu wrote:
| I wish manufactured diamonds were more prevalent before I got
| married. There's still a slight look and feel difference
| between these things. I feel the diamond still looks slightly
| more sparkling in light. This is all subjective of course...
| shawnz wrote:
| While cubic zirconia has a lower refractive index than
| diamond (making it less "brilliant"), moissanite actually has
| a higher refractive index than diamond.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| I was fortunate enough to discover moissanite. Wife loves it,
| and the price was somewhere in the ballpark of 90-95% cheaper
| than an equivalent size diamond. The added benefit is, everyone
| thinks it's a diamond and we haven't yet felt the need to
| correct them...
| chadmeister wrote:
| Exact same situation here. Wife gets complimented on it all
| the freaking time and not a single person has ever thought it
| was anything but a diamond. One of the best decisions of my
| life second only to marrying this woman!
| matwood wrote:
| > everyone thinks it's a diamond and we haven't yet felt the
| need to correct them
|
| It also avoids conversations that have few good outcomes.
| Tell someone who spent $$$$ on a diamond that you think
| diamonds are a waste of money or a humanitarian disaster, and
| it's not a great way to start a conversation. There are also
| other colored stones that I think are nicer looking than
| diamonds, but moissanite provides a nice way to stay within
| cultural norms without necessarily[1] contributing to the
| problem.
|
| [1] Obviously actively fighting against the whole diamond
| industry is better, but we all have to pick our battles.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Synthetic diamond will eventually become so easy the
| industry won't be able to supress it anymore. The collapse
| will be interesting, in the bloddy sense of the term I
| suspect.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| Synthetic diamonds are not easy to produce and they take
| time and energy (literally). The only reason synthetics
| are made is because the price of real diamonds help prop
| up the price of artificial ones. If the market collapses,
| as you predict, than artificial diamonds don't become
| economical to create any more. My prediction: new mines
| will continue to be found and real diamonds will have the
| same market hold they have now in 20 years.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| That doesn't make much sense. The ratio of the mining
| cost manufacturing cost is the same regardless of the
| demand.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| Research on bulk synthesis of diamond will continue for
| the foreseeable future, it's just too important a
| manufacturing material. It will be a massive win for
| thermal engineering when semiconductor chips can easily
| be embedded in a diamond matrix.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| "Synthetic" diamonds are better in all objective criteria
| that "natural" diamonds. Before they were a thing they
| would even be considered top quality diamonds.
|
| Once they were mass produced the criteria changed and now
| the "natural" with higher degree of impurities (a
| previously undesirable trait) are considered better.
|
| It's not about the rock. The rock is a placeholder. It's
| about how much you spent on the rock (commitment) and the
| fact that it's not available to everyone (social proof).
| pzone wrote:
| It is extremely difficult to create large, colorless,
| flawless synthetic diamonds. Currently synthetics are
| primarily used for industrial applications like drill
| bits.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| "synthetic" diamonds with far fewer impurities are far
| cheaper than "natural" diamonds of the same size.
|
| The goalpost will always move because the things used to
| justify it are excuses and not real reasons.
| petre wrote:
| Even De Beers announced they would start selling
| synthetics.
| nyolfen wrote:
| de beers is doing it as a pr move, selling them as
| 'budget' diamonds as an attempt to devalue them
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Yeah, one of my physics teachers did a job for a diamond
| company where the goal was to ADD impurities to a
| diamond, because diamonds with (the right?) impurities
| are colored, more rare (?), and fetch a higher price.
| [deleted]
| Aunche wrote:
| Synthetic rubies and sapphires have been around for over
| 100 years and are dirt cheap ($10 for a 15mm one on
| eBay). However, the market for natural rubies and
| sapphires is still going strong. A high quality natural
| Ruby costs about the same as a similar sized diamond.
| There's no reason to believe the diamond industry is
| going to crash any time soon.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Synthetic rubies and sapphires have been around for
| over 100 years and are dirt cheap ($10 for a 15mm one on
| eBay).
|
| Rubies are much cheaper than that.
|
| At least, I used to order them from Pehnec Gems at prices
| more like $3 per (in lots of 10+). I haven't bought them
| in years and pehnec.com currently resolves to 10.0.0.1;
| not sure what's going on.
| tony0x02 wrote:
| I think we're close if not already there.
| mysterydip wrote:
| First time I've heard of moissanite, unfortunately (7 years
| too late). Any recommendations on a place to shop for it?
| pottertheotter wrote:
| It's been 4 years but I got my wife's ring from
| https://www.moissaniteco.com/ and we had a good experience.
| roganartu wrote:
| It doesn't really matter, tbh. The patent for moissanite is
| held by Charles and Colvard, so no matter where you shop
| for them they will be coming from them (and should have an
| authenticity certificate too, btw).
|
| Charles and Colvard has an online shop you can find by
| googling.
|
| No affiliation, my wife's stone is just also a moissanite.
| betab7777 wrote:
| Charles and Colvard actually lost their patent a while
| ago...I wanna say two or three years in August? I'm a
| huuuuge proponent of moissanite, but it's one of the
| reasons I am slightly wary of purchasing moissanite
| online without at least speaking to the seller.
| Moissanite doesn't always come with a certificate. In my
| mind, though, if you love it and can afford it, who's to
| tell you it's fake?
| throwawayhhakdl wrote:
| Isn't it a natural gem? How is it patentable?
| CrazyStat wrote:
| I also went with moissanite. My wife (then girlfriend) was in
| the "2-3 months salary for a diamond" camp which I find
| incredibly crass. Saved $15k on the diamond by going with
| moissanite and spent a fraction of that on getting a nice
| custom ring + wedding band made by an independent local
| jeweler instead. I was happy to support a local craftsman
| rather than DeBeers & co.
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| Did her perspective change or does she believe she got an
| expensive diamond?
| CrazyStat wrote:
| I was upfront with her about my dislike for the diamond
| industry and my feelings about spending 3 months salary
| on a diamond. I told her that I wasn't getting her a
| diamond and told her exactly what it was when I gave it
| to her.
|
| I don't think I changed her perspective necessarily, but
| she knows what she got and respected my reasons for that
| decision. She didn't break up with me over it anyway.
| elcomet wrote:
| Did you tell her about the nature of the stone ?
|
| That sounds like a disaster to come if she doesn't know,
| and she learns it by going to the jeweler to clean / repair
| the stone.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Yeah I told her exactly what it was when I gave it to
| her. We had had several discussions prior about my
| feelings about the diamond industry and the surrounding
| social expectations, so she knew I wasn't going to get
| her a diamond.
| joering2 wrote:
| Can you elaborate? You mean the fact all are synthethic
| (for hewlery purpose) or something else?
| CrazyStat wrote:
| If she thought I gave her an expensive diamond and then
| learned from a jeweler that it was in fact a moissanite I
| would expect her to be upset about me misleading her.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Life Pro-Tip: don't marry a woman that will feel unvalued
| by the stone in the wedding ring.
|
| Spend the money in something better and that will further
| the relationship, like the honeymoon.
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| >> _Spend the money in something better and that will
| further the relationship, like the honeymoon._
|
| Honeymoon's over. Ever heard that? I was thinking more in
| the buy a home or invest in stocks
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| Better yet, stick it in an index tracker fund for 30
| years and when you're 60 you'll have a million in the
| bank.
|
| Which you won't spend anyway because you'll have nothing
| and no one to spend it on. But smugness and pride are
| truly priceless.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| 60x return in say 35 years is a pretty damn good index
| fund, can you tell me where to get that?
| cosmodisk wrote:
| 2-3 months of salary for me would be a substantial
| contribution towards a deposit for a flat.My fiance would
| smack my face if I'd spend it on a shining rock )
| coredog64 wrote:
| One downside to moissanite: I bought some earrings that I
| thought were nice looking and affordable. My wife doesn't
| wear them very often and instead wears real diamond earrings
| that were the same price because the moissanite is too big.
| gowld wrote:
| As thousands know, it's not enough for you to discover it, you
| need to partner to discover and appreciate it, and as a couple
| not be peer pressured by your partner's judgmental friends, or
| you need to keep a lifelong secret that you might be the
| villain for making the ethical choice.
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| >> _The rock would have been multiples larger_
|
| and that beats the purpose: "how much did you pay for that
| diamond. Must've cost a fortune." The idea is not wear
| something bigger, if it's cheaper
| dannyw wrote:
| We should crowdfund a PR campaign that diamonds are synonyms for
| death and exploitation, and it's more humane for "any gem but a
| diamond".
|
| A $10 million campaign or so, targeting youth especially, can
| have tremendous impacts on future generations.
| iamgopal wrote:
| For 10 million, we can manufacture lab grown diamonds using
| MWPCVD.
| starpilot wrote:
| shit HN says
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I think you'd need to replace the diamond / expensive jewelry
| thing with something that appeals to the younger generation. I
| am not in that generation so I am not sure what that would be,
| but here is an idea.
|
| The diamond idea is based on having something that resembles
| luxury, like yachts and expensive champagne. It was initial
| marketed on the idea that you only love someone if you
| sacrifice your salary for a month or two to buy a ring. We can
| keep that concept (because that'll be tough to change) but
| shift the object:
|
| Somehow we want to make all that kind of stuff look morally
| disgusting, i.e. private jets with CO2 emissions that help kill
| the planet and people with floods and fires, and rich snobs
| spending money on pearls when they could be donating to
| charity. Another 2008 crisis which will happen like clockwork
| would be a great wave to surf for getting momentum behind the
| idea. More homeless middle class and rich bankers will make
| people angry.
|
| The idea is to make luxury and opulence (but not necessary
| money) seem bad to the middle class, in the same way as
| advocating slavery would seem bad.
|
| Then the replacement could be a donation to the charity that
| the receiver of the engagement ring chooses. The ring could be
| a simple 18ct gold band or gold plated. It could be 3D printed
| from an unusual material. Doesn't matter that it costs $50 or
| whatever, it's now just a symbol, it could have imprinted on it
| the cause that was donated to.
|
| The $10M would be spent on seed funding for a company to sell
| this kind of product, because then it's profits can be
| reinvested in marketing it further, rather than the "1
| superbowl ad" that someone else mentioned in jest.
| jatgoodwin wrote:
| Except the diamonds discussed in the article are from Botswana,
| where the article states "the firm paid the Botswanan
| government eighty-five million dollars in taxes, and nearly
| thirty million in royalties, on profits of about a hundred and
| eighty-five million."
|
| Seems pretty good deal for the Botswanans.
| arczyx wrote:
| To be fair, paying the government in taxes and royalty does
| not mean that the diamond is not obtained through
| exploitation of the local population while the corrupt
| officials took the money (this sometimes happened in my
| country).
|
| I don't really know about Botswana though, if those money
| actually go to the Botswanans then good for them.
| grecy wrote:
| > _I don 't really know about Botswana though, if those
| money actually go to the Botswanans then good for them._
|
| Botswana is probably the best run and least corrupt country
| in Southern Africa (maybe all of Africa). They've never had
| a war of any kind, are incredibly friendly to everyone
| regardless of skin color, etc. etc.
|
| They are famous for tricking the British into giving them
| mineral rights before they were granted independence, and
| have used that money wisely the benefit the local people.
| Huge success story, and fantastic country.
| tacheiordache wrote:
| We, Romanians are very emotionally attached to Botswana's
| currency. It means in Romanian, the most important thing
| men pride themselves with.
| ci5er wrote:
| So... One superbowl ad?
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| You're totally naive if you think other gems are mined more
| humanely than diamonds. Just look at the countries about half
| the diamonds are coming from these days - Russia, Canada,
| Australia. You think it's going to be more humane and ethical
| to mine sapphires in Madagascar or Lapis in the mountains of
| Afghanistan?
| anonu wrote:
| Really cool history. Thanks for sharing this.
|
| I can imagine if you "know the truth" about the business you're
| in you might want to get out. I felt like that about certain
| financial jobs I've had in the past. The actual work felt like it
| provided no real value to society, but the intellectual
| challenges were what kept me there.
| Riguad87 wrote:
| If you think into the problem some more, I believe that you
| will conclude, on the face of the natural problem and without
| need of further information, that exit from a complicated
| family concern is the provision of the older generations and
| never in the realms of practical viability for those who
| inherit legacy management and ownership.
|
| I am very much interested in knowing your thoughts, should you,
| on reflection find my point above not to be self evident.
| vostok wrote:
| That's interesting. I actually feel quite differently about my
| own experience in finance.
|
| HFT is a great example mentioned by a sibling comment. You kind
| of need some number of traders out there to make sure that
| market prices are honest and fair. HFT has done a great job of
| reducing (a) the number of people involved in trading per
| dollar traded and (b) the amount of money made by traders per
| dollar traded.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I'm very far from the finance world so please correct me if
| I'm saying something stupid.
|
| But how does eg an algorithm that sells stock when the
| newspaper headlines have a "negative sentiment" help ensure
| that "market prices are honest and fair"? What's "honest and
| fair" about stocks across the board dropping because of
| bushfires or a virus outbreak, only to rise back to pre-
| headline levels half a day later?
| amylene wrote:
| The best way to make a correct prediction is to continually
| update your estimate as new information comes in. As it
| comes in. That's all the markets are doing.
|
| When the virus starts, the markets adjust downwards because
| there is a chance that virus kills tens of millions, which
| would have severe economic impact.
|
| As the world public health starts to reduce the error bars
| or bad outcome likelihood, the market adjusts.
|
| The problem is that you're thinking of something as having
| a concrete value. Instead, think like Tetlock teaches in
| superforecasters. Then you will have a better model of
| what's going on.
| anonu wrote:
| "keeping markets efficient" is how I justified what I did.
| But what's that number N of market participants where N+1
| brings a de minimis improvement in efficiency. I think the
| number of market participants (large institutional players)
| is already well over N. To the point where its just computers
| churning trades.
|
| To be clear, nothing wrong with that. But from a personal
| perspective you start to question your contribution.
| dang wrote:
| (We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209972)
| andrepd wrote:
| >The actual work felt like it provided no real value to society
|
| A sign of a broken system that needs urgent repair. Most
| financial jobs, hft, adtech jobs... We have our best minds
| working on things that do not provide any useful value to
| society. This is not a good state of affairs.
| brandnewlow wrote:
| I can't speak to finance but I get confused when people bash
| advertising in broad strokes. People running businesses need
| ways to exchange money for new customers. That's advertising.
| Making that more efficient might surely be annoying but a
| complete waste of time?
| hansvm wrote:
| I think the parent comment was referring to adtech in
| particular, which I agree isn't inherently bad, but which
| currently has a model of: 1. Slurp up as much data as
| possible no matter how sensitive and no matter the societal
| cost. 2. Use that data purely to increase the efficiency of
| wasting an enormous chunk of the world's bandwidth and
| computing resources (anecdotally, something like 30% of my
| traffic before I started blocking everything at a dns
| level) _pushing_ ads to anyone who might match by any means
| necessary whether they want them or not.
|
| I might even acquiesce to some form of push-based ads being
| broadly beneficial (e.g. for truly novel offerings), but
| for almost everything that currently shows up as an ad I
| would much rather be able to efficiently search for it and
| find it once I'm actually ready to buy than to be inundated
| with hundreds or thousands of worthless ads ahead of time
| in the off chance that they'll bring a particular product
| to the forefront of my mind and sway my purchasing
| decisions.
|
| That's kind of the point of frameworks like async/await :)
| Adtech is using a polling system to try and demand my
| attention with a, let's say, 1% success rate, but we could
| cut down the noise 100x simply by awaiting my next
| purchasing decision.
| kijin wrote:
| The parent said adtech, not advertising. What we call
| adtech today is advertising plus tracking. The tracking
| part is what most people seem to have a problem with.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Post-war advertising isn't much better itself, being
| based to make people to want things they might not even
| need...
| Riguad87 wrote:
| I still say we ignored the Main Street and non-scale non-
| flow micro-sensitive and disaggregated or rather yet to be
| aggregated, customers, not whole by reasons superficially
| readily learned.
|
| Sobel's The First Junk Bond, gives the mechanics of
| preservation of the vast onshore reserves, until (I don't
| have the recall but I think Sobel gives the trigger price)
| $50/B plateaux.
|
| In 95 I wrote the level of inefficiency in agency
| transactions was 60%.
|
| In 2018, stories on the embedded framework fraud of online
| advertising buying, gave the same number for the new
| system's inefficiency.
|
| Print, my world despite the gasping inhalation of every
| party I speak with, remains almost unchanged in headline
| volumes, despite the unbroken prophecy of all trade
| journalism.
| saidajigumi wrote:
| I think you have a vast disconnect between the reality of
| advertising today vs. the quaint mid-20th century mental
| model that you seem to hold. Or you're being entirely
| disingenuous about what people complaining about
| "advertising" _mean_.
|
| If modern advertising 1) did not vacuum up personal data in
| extremely invasive ways, 2) didn't distort the entire
| business models of the largest tech companies against the
| interests of the overwhelming majority of their users, and
| 3) wasn't a broad attack vector on that same user
| population (dark patterns, outright malware delivery, just
| plain terrible UX everywhere, etc.)... then there'd
| probably be very little complaint about advertising,
| relatively speaking.
|
| Put another way: no one gripes about the existence of
| Craigslist. Thought experiment: what if the targeted
| advertising model was _illegal_ , both enforceable and
| enforced with teeth. How much of what's detrimental about
| modern advertising would simply vanish, like a bad memory?
| vasco wrote:
| Not taking sides but what you described were the natural
| developments of "making advertisement more efficient",
| people found that by showing targeted ads they'd have to
| show less of them to get the same amount of new
| customers, therefore making advertisement cheaper and
| more efficient. If this is a net positive or negative for
| society is something I'll stay out of.
| rhizome wrote:
| Efficiency is overrated. It's an acceptable rationale for
| destruction and exploitation (the process demands it),
| but that acceptance doesn't make it a good thing overall.
|
| > _people found that by showing targeted ads they 'd have
| to show less of them to get the same amount of new
| customers_
|
| I mean, did they really? Where can I read about these
| successes?
| coredog64 wrote:
| Nitpick: Plenty of people gripe about CL. By giving away
| classified ads, CL killed a huge cash cow for many
| newspapers.
| ggm wrote:
| E.J. Epstein's "the death of the diamond" was a great read. But,
| since 1984 is long behind us, kind of wrong.
|
| I had no idea how much bort the world consumes. Industrial
| diamonds are .. industrial. Hard to feel romantic about drill
| bits and cutting saws.
|
| Also the simplicity of the financials to lend liz Taylor the
| dough to buy the diamond .. Who actually bought it if the money
| came from the shop?
| [deleted]
| jake-low wrote:
| Folks who enjoyed this article may also be interested in this one
| [0] from The Atlantic, published in 1982, which chronicles the
| rise of the diamond industry during the 20th century.
|
| [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-
| yo...
| dang wrote:
| Discussed 5 months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818618
|
| 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535611
|
| 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1405698
|
| Also 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1110283
|
| Those are the big threads. Lots of little ones too:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
|
| The author showed up here once:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5414757
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| What do you do with your diamonds? Are they supposed to have nice
| piezoelectric properties or something?
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Well, it's one of the hardest known materials...
| The_mboga_real wrote:
| Now do one about all the really poor diamond hunters, you fag
| devin wrote:
| Fantastic article. Before you make a comment about the diamond
| industry, read the whole thing. I've had the same view, but this
| article moved me.
|
| Also, the audio version is wonderfully read. Recommended.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| As always, beware that the article might be biased. I don't
| think it is too tinfoil to suspect that the diamond industry
| does good PR.
| berlin1212 wrote:
| Human rights violations - nobody wants to fix it!
| pacamara619 wrote:
| Is it possible to artificially create diamonds so that they have
| defects which make them slightly blue in colour?
| iamgopal wrote:
| You mean boron impurities ?
| Aunche wrote:
| Yeah. You can get artificial diamonds of pretty much every
| color. They aren't super popular though because everyone will
| assume that the diamond is artificial or even fake because
| natural blue diamonds cost $1 million.
| bruceb wrote:
| One way to shake up the industry is just not to buy diamond
| wedding rings. That simple.
|
| Big rocks on a finger make the person seem needy and insecure.
| Like I need this big flashy thing is proof of my worth.
| jtms wrote:
| Anecdotally, many younger couples I know are going with lab
| made stones or gemstones other than diamonds.
| greenonions wrote:
| I bought my wife a simple gold band. We were students. I told
| her how Americans spend so much money on diamonds and she was
| like, "that's stupid, you could go on such a good vacation
| and have nice food."
| demosito666 wrote:
| The right way to shake this industry would be to obliterate it
| completely. Finding another useless piece of glass and selling it
| for $$$ is not shaking anything.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Society would have to work to convince people that status
| symbols are not worth pursuing. Unfortunately, based on my
| experience of how people's brains work, that is quite an uphill
| battle.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| While status symbols exist everywhere, this specific
| obsessing over diamond rings and being "shamed" if you don't
| get one is pretty US-specific. In Hungary, for example, many
| couples just get simple, golden rings without any gemstone. A
| wedding ring traditionally isn't supposed to be flashy here.
| paganel wrote:
| People over here in Europe are not that hung up on diamonds.
| Not saying we don't care about status symbols, because we
| most certainly do, just wanted to point out that it's
| definetely doable to "eliminate" diamonds from the "status
| showing" game.
| zhte415 wrote:
| > Society would have to work to convince people that status
| symbols are not worth pursuing.
|
| On this note, a book recommendation: The Theory of the
| Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions.
|
| Thorsten Veblen, 1899.
|
| More relevant now than ever. From Wikipedia, a short summary:
|
| > a treatise on economics and a detailed, social critique of
| conspicuous consumption, as a function of social class and of
| consumerism, derived from the social stratification of people
| and the division of labour, which are social institutions of
| the feudal period that have continued to the modern era.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Clas.
| ..
|
| I believe he coined the phrase Conspicuous Consumption.
| mhb wrote:
| Maybe replace it with something that also consumes energy and
| produces nothing of real value. Maybe call it cryptocurrency.
| oiasdjfoiasd wrote:
| ^ guy who missed the boat.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| So the new engagement ring diamond will be a piece of glass
| with a bitcoin wallet containing 1+ BTC microetched on it?
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