[HN Gopher] Diamond prices are in free fall in one key corner of...
___________________________________________________________________
Diamond prices are in free fall in one key corner of the market
Author : latchkey
Score : 46 points
Date : 2023-09-05 04:07 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| vsskanth wrote:
| It's been a while since I've seen someone wearing a diamond
| ornament
| threadweaver34 wrote:
| As a single guy, I'm checking the ladies' hands for rings all
| the time.
| mellavora wrote:
| As a married guy, I see my wife's ring every day.
| sublinear wrote:
| My experience has been that you just don't see people wearing
| wedding bands all that often anymore. They're inconvenient
| and unfashionable. Marriage is as unpopular as ever and only
| the most conservative areas actually care about marital
| status.
| adolph wrote:
| What an interesting story of pricing in a cultural market with
| encumbant and new tech, and a cartel attempting to retain its
| market power but slowly losing ground.
|
| _In June 2022, De Beers was charging about $1,400 a carat for
| the select makeable diamonds. By July this year, that had dropped
| to about $850 a carat. And there may be more room to fall: the
| diamonds are still 10% more expensive than in the "secondary"
| market, where traders and manufacturers sell among themselves._
|
| . . .
|
| _. . . India, where about 90% of global supply is cut and
| polished. Lab grown accounted for about 9% of diamond exports
| from the country in June, compared with about 1% five years ago.
| Given the steep discount that they sell for, that means about 25%
| to 35% of volume is now lab grown, according to Liberum Capital
| Markets._
|
| . . .
|
| _About five years ago, lab grown gems sold at about a 20%
| discount to natural diamonds, but that has now blown out to
| around 80% as the retailers push them at increasingly lower
| prices and the cost of making them falls. The price of polished
| stones in the wholesale market has fallen by more than half this
| year alone._
| skywhopper wrote:
| Makes total sense. Lab-created diamonds have been
| indistinguishable (for the typical consumer) from natural ones
| for years. DeBeers kept jewelry retailers in line in pushing
| "real" diamonds, but it was just a matter of time until something
| happened to shake that hold lose. Given the rapid switch away
| from gold for wedding bands etc after the 2008 crisis led to a
| major price spike, it is not surprising to me that jewelry
| consumers are willing to question whether "real" diamonds are
| worth the premium cost as well.
| webignition wrote:
| Might lab-grown diamonds have reached a point of being
| indistinguishable from natural diamonds such that people pass
| off lab-grown diamonds as natural diamonds without anyone being
| able to tell?
| zeitgeistcowboy wrote:
| If you buy a certified diamond they will come with a laser
| engraving that indicates it was lab grown. They can tell if
| it was lab grown with special equipment and/or the chain of
| purchase. So, I guess you'd have to believe the certification
| company if they say it is NOT lab grown and that's what you
| want.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I have read that the distinguishing feature is that natural
| diamonds have flaws. Entrapped dirt or what have you that is
| not found in the sterile environment of the synthetic ones.
| zeitgeistcowboy wrote:
| I bought a yellow lab grown diamond for my wife's wedding
| ring and with a jewelers loupe you can see the flaws in it.
| It looks like dirt.
| OJFord wrote:
| Maybe a specialist could tell a natural, formed over
| thousands of years, flaw from a lab-grown flaw, but really
| I think it's more like you _can get_ a better grade from a
| lab (and especially with consistency, frequency, at a much
| lower price due to being rare to find naturally occurring).
| i.e. you can get flawed and coloured lab-grown diamonds
| too. (A mix of taking less care /time, older equipment, and
| binning the results like silicon wafers I assume.)
| hinkley wrote:
| Like honey, the inclusions are the only thing that
| distinguish it from counterfeit.
| typest wrote:
| I just got engaged. When we looked at rings, the jeweler asked my
| fiance if she wanted natural or synthetic, and she responded "I
| don't want a blood diamond!!" Of course, mined diamonds aren't
| blood diamonds, but her impression was still they were a little
| ickier.
|
| The jeweler told me that one reason to get a natural diamond was
| that the prices of lab grown diamonds had been falling, whereas
| natural hasn't as much, so the ring would hold more value. I told
| her that was exactly why we wanted to go with a lab grown
| diamond! This isn't an investment -- we aren't planning to sell
| the ring.
|
| Ultimately, for a price that didn't break the bank, we got an
| absolutely gorgeous ring with diamonds larger and higher quality
| than we would have been able to afford with natural. Diamond
| rings may have started as something to resell in divorce, but for
| us (for my fiance really), it was more about getting something
| that was beautiful, and if it didn't cost as much, great! I
| suspect most Americans will feel similarly.
| ftxbro wrote:
| > the kinds of stones that go into the cheaper one- or two-carat
| solitaire bridal rings popular in the US have experienced far
| sharper price drops than the rest of the market
| gnicholas wrote:
| I wonder what the second-order consequences will be. That is,
| people will still want to signal their commitment/ability to
| provide when proposing, so the drop in the price of diamonds
| won't necessarily reduce the overall outlay.
|
| Instead, it would shift the expense to another category (platinum
| or other expensive metals) or simply lead people to buy more
| carats (4 is the new 2!). In some ways, these moves could help
| luxury brands like Tiffany, since their well-known price premium
| would provide the same signaling device for folks who want to
| spend tens of thousands of dollars when proposing.
| dahdum wrote:
| Bespoke. Allocate the savings from lab diamonds to design and
| you can get a more meaningful ring with higher quality
| materials for similar cost.
|
| Customization has been on the uptrend for several years.
| paxys wrote:
| Rings will get bigger/more extravagant and get mixed with other
| precious gems or metals. What is not going to happen is stores
| selling cheaper jewelry.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| My naive assumption is that outside of geologists and
| jewelers, it is impossible for a layman to identify natural,
| synthetic, or even a different gemstone.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I would agree, but I think that after some period of time,
| it will become known that the price of diamonds have
| dropped dramatically. This means that if a man wants to
| signal that he's spent a chunk of change on a ring, he'll
| either need to go with a much larger stone than before, or
| he'll need some sort of external signifier. That could be a
| certificate that it's a natural diamond, or that the
| setting is somehow super fancy.
| sublinear wrote:
| > people will still want to signal their commitment/ability to
| provide when proposing
|
| Anyone over about 25 and actually mature enough to commit
| probably doesn't care that much about the ring as long as it's
| not literally a funyun.
|
| How about a nice home, a leisurely lifestyle and solid career,
| an amiable personality, a great social circle, track record of
| being dependable with family, etc. You know, the things the
| ring is supposed to actually represent.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| > Diamond demand across the board has weakened after the
| pandemic, as consumers splash out again on travel and
| experiences, while economic headwinds eat into luxury spending
|
| Are people becoming more careful about such valuable purchases
| since losing a diamond ring is so heartbreaking? It seems like
| the concept of "throwaway" rings is increasing so you don't have
| to worry about losing the real one which is an argument no person
| ever wants to have with their spouse. I keep my real one locked
| away and wear a titanium one around.
| Fezzik wrote:
| What a great opportunity to re-share one of my favorite articles:
| https://priceonomics.com/diamonds-are-bullshit/
|
| I really can't think of an example better than people buying
| shiny rocks for absurd amounts of money that demonstrates how
| non-advanced we are, as a society generally.
| OJFord wrote:
| It's crazy to prefer a natural diamond for anything other than a
| collectors' item. It's not about being 'cheap' - whatever your
| budget is, if you're picking an engagement ring say, why _not_
| get a technically superior (or larger) stone for the same price
| tag?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I dunno... it seems no less crazy than people who put "three
| months salary" on their finger.
| [deleted]
| xwdv wrote:
| What about an artificial meteorite instead of an actual one?
| irrational wrote:
| I purchased a 1 carat diamond ring for my now-wife in the
| mid-1990s for $600. For our 25th wedding anniversary my wife
| and I designed a new solid gold ring using Moissanite stones
| that cost about $700. She loves her new ring and everyone
| thinks the stones are real diamonds. We've even had jewelers
| comment on her diamond ring. I truly don't understand why
| anyone would go with diamonds these days.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Where did you get the stones, and did the jeweler who built
| the new ring care at all?
| irrational wrote:
| We had it made in China. There are a number of online
| chinese jewelers. They will work with you to make the ring
| to your exact specifications. They will create a 3D
| rendering of the ring for your approval. They will let you
| pick out the stones you want. After it is manufactured,
| they will create a video showing the ring (or earrings or
| whatever) to you for approval before shipping it to you. I
| figured that for $700 we could risk it, but it turned out
| to be a gorgeous ring and we have had zero complaints about
| it in the 4 years since we received it. It is rock solid
| (pun intended) and as pretty today as the day she first put
| it on.
| throw3747874747 wrote:
| If future wife requires diamond, another stone is not going to
| fix root problem you have. Go with someone less materialistic.
| a-user-you-like wrote:
| If you ask her if she'd prefer a lab diamond or one from the
| ground, and she says ground, you have your answer. If you
| force the issue and insist on getting the lab diamond, you're
| the douche.
| OJFord wrote:
| Why ask? Personally I just nerded out over the specs a bit,
| filtered for colourless and unflawed as far as the naked
| eye can see (i.e. you can get better but requires a
| specialist with specialist equipment to tell, so who cares,
| she's wearing it not collecting or selling it) and then
| went with the largest I didn't think would look silly (or
| alternatively that's within budget, whichever limit's
| tighter).
|
| I don't really think there's an unbiased way to ask. 'Lab-
| grown or natural' makes the latter sound more 'real' and
| better. 'Ethical or blood sweat and tears' is obviously
| out. 'Lab-grown and technically superior for the same
| money, or natural and more flawed' is about the best I can
| come up with, but the former is just objectively the
| correct answer isn't it? I don't see how anyone could
| understand the question and answer the latter. There just
| isn't a reason to prefer natural, all else being equal, for
| an item of personal jewellery that you're going to wear?
| organsnyder wrote:
| Plenty of people have been socialized to expect certain
| material things as part of the marriage process. Does it make
| sense? Probably not. Is it a character flaw? Absolutely not.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| How is it not a character flaw ?
| ethanbond wrote:
| Because all of us want stupid shit?
|
| Unless you're willing to bundle everything beyond pure
| Buddha-tier equanimity as "character flaws."
|
| it's unfair to draw the line between "useless thing you
| were socialized to spend money on" and "useless thing
| someone else was socialized to spend money on."
| bigbillheck wrote:
| The flaw isn't 'wanting the diamond', the flaw is 'being
| aware of the horrific nature of the industry and still
| wanting the diamond'.
| busterarm wrote:
| A significant volume of the world's clothes are produced
| through sweatshop and child labor.
|
| Then there's consumer electronics manufacturing... ...or
| being a tourist to the Saudi Arabia/Turkey/Russia/UAE
| where modern-day slavery is taking place at scale.
|
| Out of sight, out of mind.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I'm sure the coffee you drink and the tshirts you wear
| and the phone you use are all ethically sourced eh?
|
| We're all deluding ourselves for the sake of sanity +
| having nice stuff.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Are you telling me I can get lab-grown coffee and
| t-shirts that avoid the nastiest parts of the traditional
| processes? As for phones, I'm on a used iphone 6. That
| doesn't make its original sourcing any better, but harm
| reduction is still reduction
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Eh... stupidly expensive, unethically sourced, low store
| of value, easily substituted by superior cheaper
| alternatives feels like the height of "bad" materialism
| if there is such a thing.
| busterarm wrote:
| Considering how many marriages end due to finances and
| how often couples fight over money, "wastes money" is
| probably one of the least desirable traits in a future
| spouse.
|
| "Failure to see reason" is probably the next biggest red-
| flag/dealbreaker for me.
|
| I'm going to die alone.
| jpn wrote:
| > The handicap principle is a hypothesis proposed by the
| biologist Amotz Zahavi to explain how evolution may lead to
| "honest" or reliable signalling between animals which have an
| obvious motivation to bluff or deceive each other. It suggests
| that costly signals must be reliable signals, costing the
| signaller something that could not be afforded by an individual
| with less of a particular trait
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle
| xnx wrote:
| Welcome to the world of Veblen goods:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
| pjot wrote:
| When the Apple App Store first came out there was an app
| called "I am rich" that cost $1000.
|
| It's only functionality was a button that when pressed
| displayed the text, "I am rich!"
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| So funny.As I understand it, $1000 was the highest price
| tier Apple provided for the App Store.
|
| There must be a lesson (or perhaps even a metaphor?) in
| that half a dozen or so copies sold. At least one or two of
| the "marks" claimed they bought it on accident. Maybe. Or
| maybe some people have a _lot_ more disposable income than
| I do.
|
| It still feels to me like developer performance art.
| m-ee wrote:
| It was better than that, it displayed a few sentences that
| included a misspelling
| Trias11 wrote:
| ..and add here technically superior plastic flowers with a
| selection of natural scent sprays :)
| Xcelerate wrote:
| I want a lab grown diamond in the shape of a giant wafer. That
| way I can build a pan around it and use that to cook food in.
| That incredible thermal conductivity is wasted sitting in a
| piece of jewelry.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| But if we're being logical then you might as well go with
| Moissanite (lab-grown silicon carbide) instead of diamond,
| which is cheaper, nearly as tough, and also has better fire?
| slashdev wrote:
| I pitched this to my wife a few years back. She insisted she'd
| rather have a smaller natural diamond. It makes no sense to me.
| Shiny carbon is shiny carbon to me. There's no real logic in
| it. But given it's a status symbol that derives its value from
| its rareness, I suppose it's no different than a Luis Vutton or
| a Rolex. It's not about the function, it's about the fact that
| you can afford one. I hate that mentality, I refuse to buy
| anything like that for myself.
| kalupa wrote:
| guess she prefers them to be forged by blood instead of a
| high pressure container
| scotty79 wrote:
| It's all made up, through and through so it doesn't need to
| make any sense.
| edge17 wrote:
| With logic like that, why buy a diamond at all? Sounds like
| your wife gets it!
| paxys wrote:
| A good Rolex at least has a thriving resale market, and can
| actually increase in value over time. Same for a lot of other
| luxury goods as well as other stores of value (like gold or
| Bitcoin). Diamonds on the other hand are effectively
| worthless the moment they leave the store. Their high prices
| are a product of marketing and social pressure, nothing more.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| I agree with the rest but...
|
| > Diamonds are effectively worthless the moment they leave
| the store
|
| That's not the case! You can have the stone removed from
| the ring and, in case you don't have the original
| certificate, sent to a certification authority (like GIA)
| to have it graded. I think it also, once graded, gets
| automatically laser-engraved (above a certain carat) but
| I'm not sure about that: maybe you need to pay for the
| laser engraving too. And it's then got a value on the
| market: there's a worldwide market (or several) and every
| single jeweler in the world can see which stones are
| available at which price depending on their specs and book
| any stone and have it shipped in a few clicks.
|
| Source: I've got a good friend who's a jeweler and he
| showed that to me.
|
| Now: fancy shops (with famous names) may make fun of people
| by selling them stones at 3x their values or more (I don't
| doubt that) but you can also go to an independent jeweler
| and have him model/build the ring (or he'll outsource the
| 3D modelling) then put the stone on it and you'll pay a
| price much closer to actual price of the stone (the jeweler
| doesn't really work harder for a 0.5 carat stone vs a 2
| carat one, so the bigger the stone, the less is "wasted" on
| the ring).
|
| Regarding the differing values: I think it's mandatory that
| every lab-grown diamond above a certain carat are laser-
| engraved so unless labs growing these diamonds are
| cheating, it's extremely hard to make a lab-grown one pass
| for a billion years old one.
| Someone wrote:
| > I think it's mandatory that every lab-grown diamond
| above a certain carat are laser-engraved
|
| https://www.gemsociety.org/article/lab-grown-diamonds-
| faq:
|
| _"Many lab-made diamonds have an inscription that
| identifies them as lab-made.
|
| Diamonds can also have a lab report number inscribed on
| the girdle"_
|
| I think it's very likely that, If that "above a certain
| carat" were true, that page would have mentioned it.
|
| I also cannot think of a good argument why it would be
| reasonable to require producers of artificial diamonds to
| add such markers.
| conductr wrote:
| Because the GEM Society is a business that wants to 1)
| continue grading diamonds and 2) begin cataloging lab
| diamonds. Both of which are revenue sources.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > effectively worthless the moment they leave the store
|
| I hear this a lot... But where can I buy a massive diamond
| 2nd hand for a few bucks?
| nelgaard wrote:
| Not a few bucks, but for 10 percent of the
| valuation/retail price:
|
| https://www.konkurser.dk/search/?s=diamant
|
| It is in Danish, but it is bankruptcy auctions, the high
| price is the valuation (typically the retail price before
| bankruptcy), the low price is the final highest bid, all
| in DKK.
| paxys wrote:
| Look at it the other way. If you have a diamond in good
| condition, can you sell it anywhere for "market price"
| the same way you would gold or silver? No, because the
| rock is not rare, and there's basically no way to verify
| its origin outside of the store.
|
| Look up Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace in your area
| and you'll find plenty of cheap listings for diamond
| jewelry. Will you really take a chance on any of them
| though?
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Large, good quality diamonds are rare, smaller ones not
| so much (certain colors aside).
| hammock wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bid%E2%80%93ask_spread
| jaaron wrote:
| > Shiny carbon is shiny carbon to me
|
| You're only considering intrinsic value. That's helpful for
| raw commodities.
|
| For nearly everything else, value is tied to perception,
| history, etc.
|
| If I have two identical baseballs, they're both "just"
| baseballs. But one of them could have much more value due to
| its history: maybe it was a homerun ball by a famous player,
| or a ball that I or a family member hit/caught. Same
| function. Could be otherwise identical, but could also be
| worth very different amounts.
|
| The stories we tell is where the primary value is.
|
| In this case, your wife values the story of a natural diamond
| that was formed through long, natural processes and required
| the effort of finding, excavating, cutting and so on.
|
| Now you could disagree with that story, or you could dislike
| the tellers and amplifiers of that story, but the fact
| remains that your wife and many others value that story,
| making it more precious than merely "shiny carbon."
|
| This is branding and marketing 101. Humans are storytelling
| machines and they understand value largely via stories and
| relationships. Misunderstanding that is a failure to
| understand essential human characteristics.
| slashdev wrote:
| Yeah, that makes sense. It's not about the function, that's
| for sure.
|
| > Misunderstanding that is a failure to understand
| essential human characteristics.
|
| I'll add that to the list of human behavior that I don't
| really understand.
| mongol wrote:
| Yeah this is very true. You have a painting, the artist may
| be Picasso, but uncertain. Suddenly it is confirmed it was
| Picasso. Same painting, different price.
| brianwawok wrote:
| The difference between a $200 and a $2000 bottle of wine is
| mostly how expensive the thing you are drinking is. Tons of
| industries and products work like this. Why would it surprise
| you that gems are any different?
| rbranson wrote:
| That is how prices work regardless of industry or product.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > The difference between a $200 and a $2000 bottle of wine
| is mostly how expensive the thing you are drinking is.
|
| Yes, but the subset of people that can afford and would
| drink a $200 bottle of wine is hardly any bigger than the
| subset of people that can afford and would drink a $2000
| bottle of wine.
|
| It makes perfect sense to me why people would drink the
| $2000 bottle of wine. Why not? They've got the money.
|
| If you balk at a $2000 bottle of wine, you're probably not
| casually drinking $200 bottles of wine either - and if you
| are - you're in a very small percentage of people where the
| price difference means something. It's maybe 2% of the
| population.
|
| The other 97.75% isn't buying $200 bottles of wine. And the
| other 0.25% can buy $2000 bottles just fine.
| dagw wrote:
| _but the subset of people that can afford and would drink
| a $200 bottle of wine is hardly any bigger than the
| subset of people that can afford and would drink a $2000
| bottle of wine._
|
| I don't think this is correct. Most wine
| nerds/enthusiasts I know (and I include myself) would
| consider dropping $200 on one of their 'dream bottles' in
| the right circumstance, especially if splitting the cost
| with a couple of friends. I don't know a single person
| who would ever drop $2000 on a bottle of wine under any
| circumstance.
| mellavora wrote:
| And I have a friend of a friend whose entire business is
| helping people sell wine for 20K a bottle and up.
| Emphasis on "and up"
|
| I also have a friendly relationship with a local wine
| shop, where I usually buy bottles for 10-15 bucks. They
| also carry (and sell) many bottles at 5K a pop and up.
|
| And if you want to get all mathematical about it,
| assuming the right kind of power law distribution, it is
| more likely to see one person who would pay 2000 for a
| bottle than to find 2 people who would pay 200.
|
| power law stats is weird. Once you are outside of the
| bell, the bell area has NO constraint on the observation.
| Unlike Gaussian and similar distributions, where
| probability falls off very rapidly as you move out of the
| bell.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Unless I'm wrong those are considered Veblen goods. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/veblen-good.asp
| spiderxxxx wrote:
| Diamonds are not that rare. They're durable, so it's not like
| an old diamond is going to break or something. So, there
| should be plenty of diamonds for everyone who wants one.
| Rings made in the 1920s and up probably have some sort of
| diamond in it, and if you don't like the ring, keep the gem
| and craft a new ring around it. I prefer more rare stones,
| such as a padparadscha sapphire, or Alexandrite. I prefer to
| give my woman a gemstone as rare as she is, and as colorful
| as she is, not something which has virtually no color, and is
| definitely not rare.
| TylerE wrote:
| They are extremely hard, which is in most respects the
| opposite. Doesn't take much to shatter one into a million
| pieces...
|
| Try hey will also burn readily at house firm temperatures
| threadweaver34 wrote:
| > derives its value from its rareness
|
| Hah!
|
| The big issue with choosing a smaller, natural stone is you
| can't really be sure it's actually natural. The industry has
| so many unethical practices I wouldn't be confident in any
| "certification" that comes with a stone's origin. Even lower-
| grade stones might just be from lab rejects, or labs
| intentionally growing good, but not perfect stones.
| paxys wrote:
| As opposed to the diamond mining industry which is a
| paragon of ethics...
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| "As opposed to"? Sounds like you are agreeing that "The
| industry has so many unethical practices".
| paxys wrote:
| Mined and lab grown diamonds have entirely different
| suppliers, supply chains and certifications. The person I
| replied to has problems with the latter, which is idiotic
| considering the alternative is 1000x worse.
| Clent wrote:
| You need to re-read the person you replied to, they
| aren't saying what you think they are saying.
|
| Mined diamonds may actually be lab grown diamonds
| certified as mined.
|
| The financial incentives only goes in one direction on
| this one.
| linuxftw wrote:
| I call them 'slave stones' because the miners are often
| times literal slaves.
| failuser wrote:
| The one from the lab does not have blood, sweat and tears
| spent on mining it. Lab workers overtime at best.
|
| Maybe if artificial diamonds are made from forsaken orphan
| ashes they would have a similar sentimental value.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| The difference would be, that one was made artificial in a
| human machine in a lab - and the other by raw natural forces
| in the wild.
|
| There is no practical value in jewelry anyway, it is a status
| symbol and the context of coming from the wild extracted
| under wild conditions (and maybe violently, ooh, blood
| diamonds, how exiting, erm shocking) has of course a higher
| symbolic value. So a artificial made one would be considered
| "fake".
|
| Romanticism is not attached to logic. But it is still a real
| factor in human decision making. And to be honest, if I would
| be into jewelry, I probably would prefer the "real" one, too.
| But I am rather into extreme sports and any rings or alike
| are just dangerous baggage there (a friend of mine allmost
| lost a finger, while climbing over a fence and his ring got
| stuck on some metal piece).
|
| But if your wife happens to be into it - applying logic here
| will be probably seen as a cheap way to save money.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| > artificial in a human machine in a lab - and the other by
| raw natural forces in the wild
|
| What do you suppose is the value that distinguishes these
| two processes? The story? Or is it the persistence of the
| naturalistic fallacy, surfacing in all sorts of places and
| in all kinds of minds including those one would expect are
| habitually vigilant against what is essentially a
| generalized form of superstition.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| "Artificial" usually isn't a positive thing when the word
| comes up. We're often told to avoid artificial
| sweeteners, artificially hydrogenated oils, artificially
| enhanced flavors, artificial dyes and colorants... and
| that's just in food and beverage, and totally ignoring
| the luxury image of natural hardwood instead of wood
| veneer, natural glass/crystal instead of plastic.
|
| Diamonds are just about the only thing I can think of
| where artificial and natural are encouraged to be seen as
| equals. I'm sure some people have a naturalist/spiritual
| angle, but I'd bet most are simply applying the wisdom of
| so many other shopping areas to this one.
| munificent wrote:
| _> What do you suppose is the value that distinguishes
| these two processes? The story?_
|
| Of course it is the story. The value in everything is the
| meaning we attach to it, not the thing itself.
|
| With a natural diamond, it's the idea that you have a
| unique artifact formed over millions of years, an
| irreplaceable corner of the Earth and its history owned
| by you and you alone, which then suggests that you
| yourself have a certain uniqueness and irreplaceability.
|
| You can argue that people _should not_ choose that
| particular story and that particular meaning, but that 's
| a moral argument, and not an argument about the object
| itself. (And if you choose to make that argument, I would
| first suggest introspecting over how much of your own
| stories and meaning are as arbitrary as that one.)
|
| I don't care a bit for natural diamonds, but I have
| infinite respect for the stories and meaning people
| choose to embue their lives with. Ultimately, it's all we
| have.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| I don't argue that stories are very important, and they
| are in fact the only thing we have. But that does not
| make themselves Justified categorically.
|
| In fact my username, chain of fools, is the title of a
| song whose lyrics, although very brief, are very much
| about believing stories told with the motivation to do
| harm - or at very least to deprive others of something
| valuable so that the teller can have that same something
| cheaply.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "But that does not make themselves Justified
| categorically"
|
| Diamonds are the hardest objects found naturaly. While
| everything around them was crushed and changed ober the
| eons - they persisted. And if polished they shined. And
| can cut any other known material.
|
| It makes for a good story, which is why humans are after
| them, since a long time. Kings and queens wore them.
| Pirates stole and buried them.
|
| Is the story justified categorically? I don't know, but
| it is an old story.
|
| But personally I rather would like to have the sci-fi
| story, where diamonds are cheaply avaiable, as a very
| strong building material..
| paxys wrote:
| I personally find the decision to buy lab grown diamonds to
| be weirder, because if you are already thinking logically
| rather than emotionally and can resist the social pressure
| then why waste money on a diamond at all? There are plenty of
| gems or metals out there that are cheaper, prettier, more
| rare and hold their value better than diamonds (whether
| natural _or_ lab grown).
| edge17 wrote:
| Exactly, the whole point of buying at all is to adhere to a
| convention or tradition.
| [deleted]
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| Because lab grown diamonds are naturally grown, unless
| humans are supernatural.
| scottiebarnes wrote:
| humans are natural, therefore all human creations and
| processes are natural?
|
| so my plastic bottles are naturally grown?
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| Naturally made, yes. the specific process called "grown"
| would better apply if there was, say, a plastic bottle-
| fruiting plant, but whether that plant was designed by
| humans or simply found by them in the environment does
| not change whether it is natural.
|
| There is no such thing as natural versus unnatural, this
| dichotomy is a holdover from the time when we believed
| there was another plane of reality outside or distinct
| from the "natural" universe, which was somehow tainted by
| flaws unique to humans, being creatures with one foot in
| both realities.
|
| I realize it sounds like a technically correct Internet
| argument of the nitpick variety, but I think that the
| norm of asseting an unchallenged bias toward "natural,"
| and against "artificial," could use a general
| reassessment as it is constantly exploited by people
| using this ultimately baseless distinction as a way to
| bias opinion uncritically toward one kind of behavior or
| another.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Would you say soda bottle preforms grow into plastic
| bottles?
|
| https://www.teachersource.com/product/preforms-and-
| caps/chem...
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| If you like the shininess of diamonds, they're really hard
| to beat on the "pretty" front. Diamonds have a crazy
| internal refractive index, which, once exemplified by an
| appropriate cut, gives them a pretty unique shininess. The
| only gems that come close are substantially softer, meaning
| they lose they lose the precise cuts that give them the
| extra shimmer relatively quickly.
|
| Don't enrich Russia by buying mined diamonds, but there's
| definitely a compelling argument for lab-grown ones.
| irrational wrote:
| But Moissanite are shinier than diamonds, very nearly as
| hard, but at a fraction of the price. And nobody can tell
| the difference without training and possibly a
| microscope.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| When I last researched the topic, Moissanites almost
| exclusively came with a kinda ugly yellow tinge, but
| apparently that's not an issue anymore. Definitely a
| great choice. (Though I disagree that laypeople can't
| tell the difference between doubly-refractive and singly
| refractive gems)
| causality0 wrote:
| Frankly I'm amazed it took this long for people to realize
| diamond isn't that special a material, at least considering how
| easy it is to make.
| silisili wrote:
| Not just that, even natural diamonds just aren't that rare.
|
| This is what happens when one company corners a market, and
| controls supply and marketing.
| jewelry wrote:
| It's also a product that's not required for day-to-day.
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| Unless you have to cut really hard things.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Which conveniently can be done with tiny dust-sized
| diamonds.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think the geological formations that were guaranteed to
| contain diamonds only became common knowledge in the late
| 1990's or early 2000's, yes? I recall reading an article
| about some researchers testing their theory by buying a chunk
| of land in Canada, and proving they were right.
|
| People thought that was the beginning of the end for de
| Beers, and between that and better synthetics that seems to
| be how things played out.
| latchkey wrote:
| https://archive.ph/hDBZu
| arcticbull wrote:
| De Beers basically controls the whole diamond market. They make
| it almost impossible to resell them and strictly control the
| supply. They were also responsible (via advertising agency N. W.
| Ayer) for the idea that diamonds should be used in engagement
| rings in 1938-1941.
|
| This write-up from The Atlantic from 1982 explains the situation
| well. [1]
|
| Not sad to see the cartel taking an L.
|
| [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-
| yo...
| zokier wrote:
| Lots of things have happened in the 40 years since that article
| was written. De Beers do not control the market anymore the way
| they did before. Wikipedia says
|
| > De Beers's market share of rough diamonds to fall from as
| high as 90% in the 1980s to 29.5% in 2019
|
| > De Beers sold off the vast majority of its diamond stockpile
| in the late 1990s - early 2000s and the remainder largely
| represents working stock (diamonds that are being sorted before
| sale). This was well documented in the press but remains little
| known to the general public.
|
| > As a part of reducing its influence, De Beers withdrew from
| purchasing diamonds on the open market in 1999 and ceased, at
| the end of 2008, purchasing Russian diamonds mined by the
| largest Russian diamond company Alrosa
| willcipriano wrote:
| People watch one episode of Jon Oliver and have to let us all
| know.
| woooooo wrote:
| That's whataboutism. (/s)
| another_poster wrote:
| A good analogy is ice. We all use "freezer-grown crystalline
| water," but prior to the invention of refrigeration, we harvested
| natural ice from frozen lakes and stored them in ice houses for
| use throughout the summer.
|
| Sure, there's some romance from hand-harvested ice, but you can't
| beat the price and purity of ice from a freezer.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-09-05 23:01 UTC)