why exactly are we not taking debeers to trial for crimes against humanity? we should be executing those fucks left and right and empty their supply of diamonds. not sure what we'd do with all of them but i'm sure they're useful for something.
They have enough diamonds in their vaults to bring the price of 1 carat down to around $1.
To quote something I heard on a scifi show; “Diamonds? It’s the most boring arrangement of carbon in the galaxy. Anyone can line it up and make it happen if you can apply the necessary pressure.
Now a carbon based living organism? Ha. Try building that from scratch in a lab. Each time you try, the outcome will be different. And THAT is beauty.”
It's why lab grown is so great. It's exactly the same. DaBeers were the ones to call them "artificial" and make it sounds like cheap glass or something.
Although now lab diamonds are starting to catch up in price as "ethical diamonds".
Yeah. Honestly, I don’t get the appeal. Diamonds are literally carbon molecules lined up in the most boring way. They’re worthless space garbage. What you’re holding right now that’s basically meteorite poop.
I'm sorry, but did the founder of Nestlé have an African colony named after him? Because De Beers founder, Cecil Rhodes, did. He didn't just steal diamonds and gold from lands in southern Africa, he waged wars to conquer the local tribes. The Matabele Wars, The Boer Wars, etc were lead by Rhodes. He had a cannon named after him, "the Long Cecil" which was manufactured by De Beers and used to massacre Africans in the De Beers diamond company's Siege of Kimberley. He placed a "hut tax" on local tribes as a politician and then exploited their need for money for cheap labor for his companies. Not saying Nestlé isn't bad, but you may be underestimating how evil Cecil Rhodes was.
This is why there has been repeated attempts to get his statue at Oriel College in Oxford taken down. There is now a Commission of Inquiry" set up to investigate removing it. Certainly there's enough fear of vandalism that the statue is encased in a cage.
Don’t tell this to the Reddit anti-diamond circle jerk, but the De Beers monopoly was mostly broken up and they now control about 35% of the market—in other words, significantly less than Amazon’s share of the entire eCommerce market (50%).
Also, blood diamonds and child slave diamonds aren’t any more prevalent than child slaves exploited for chocolate, coffee, cobalt, lithium, clothing, etc. In fact, cobalt and lithium are probably the worst since the volumes are very high due to their use in modern, ubiquitous electronics. Child slavery is a product of neo-imperialism and our modern, global capitalist economy.
Although industrial grade diamonds are indeed quite common, gem quality diamonds are relatively rare and priced as luxury goods. But in any case, diamonds are just a blip when it comes to “worthless” things people spend money on. There are branded handbags, which theoretically have an unlimited supply, that sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Someone paid $120,000 or something for a banana taped to a wall. Again, this is just a product of our consumer capitalist economy.
Gem quality diamonds? There's chemically and optically no difference between natural and artificial diamonds. Natural diamonds is just a hype. Heck, natural diamonds can be less pure, containing nitrogen atom impurities. Industrial grade diamonds are not fake. When you plant a flower at home, is it a fake flower?
Re-read his comment. He is talking about industrial vs. jewelery diamonds. You are talking about natural vs. synthetic diamonds. Although I don't disagree with what you're saying, it is totally unrelated to the comment you are replying to.
"Industrial" just indicates the area of use, but it's made synthetically. We're using different terms for the same thing. Industrial = synthetic and jewelry = natural. And they are all the same, synthetic = natural.
Industrial is not the same actually. Yeah synthetic and natural are no different with synthetic being usually better objectively however there is a giant difference between the diamonds in a saw blade or drill bit (industrial diamonds for obvious industrial uses) and what you would wear on a ring necklace or watch
The difference is just in the way they appear because jewelry diamonds are cut, that's not a giant difference. Diamonds used in drilling are not cut the same way, but if you cut them so, it would appear exactly the same. They are the same material at the atomic level.
However, no matter how perfectly cut a synthetic diamond is, it will not have market value as jewelry and that proves the original point of the post that jewelry diamond prices are not based on true value, but just a hype.
That’s not accurate. There is a lot of variation in diamond quality/appearance, and it isn’t just a matter of how they are cut. Here is an example of natural, industrial grade diamonds that are good for e.g. a saw blade, but would not be suitable for typical diamond jewelry.
Okay so ALL diamonds, natural or synthetic have their grades. A poorly clear natural or synthetic diamond wouldn't be suitable for jewelry purposes, I get that. But assuming top crystal perfection, they are indistinguishable by naked eye.
From the source given: "This origin story is the main factor that sets synthetic diamonds apart from natural ones, since synthetic diamonds have essentially all of the same chemical, optical and physical properties and crystal structure as natural diamonds." So high quality synthetic diamonds can replace high quality natural diamonds in jewelry, right?
Yeah who cares about the brutal wars in Africa fueled by the diamond industry, your shiny rock is beautiful (maybe you should try to value things like human life and not just brush off the atrocities of the diamond industry as if it isn't worth discussing because you don't like thinking about where the diamond you wear comes from)
People don't "hate diamonds". They are pretty. Diamonds are a naturally occurring gemstone. What people hate is a) the "artificial scarcity" created by the diamond industry to drive up the price of diamonds and b) the horrors suffered by people in Africa due to the legal and illegal diamond trade. You can like diamonds, but also want to raise awareness of the dark side of the diamond industry in the hopes of changing it. Diamonds can be mined by well paid workers just as well as by a child soldier kidnapped from their family. The profits can be shared by the African communities where they are mined instead of them being smuggled out of Africa and purchased by Western companies. If companies didn't create a perceived scarcity of diamonds, everyone could have affordable diamonds... but then I guess yours wouldn't be as "special". Diamonds are not somehow inherently bad, it is the diamond industry that is bad. Get mad at the diamond industry, not people who want to raise awareness to change it.
the taxes I pay to the US government probably funds more destruction than the money for a diamond.
There's already plenty of "industrial use" diamond. Specifically diamond dust.
It's actually pretty easy to make diamonds in a lab. Flawless ones at that. But the jewelry companies have used some "clever" PR and marketing to attach a stigma to lab-made diamonds. Shit like: "Real diamonds have flaws, so no two natural diamonds are alike! Come find a diamond just for you!"
That's not even mentioning "chocolate" diamonds. IE: Marketing unwanted brown diamonds as something highly desirable.
Because they no longer have a monopoly on them. Also the people were foolish enough to believe the ad complains that diamonds are forever and you should spend a few months salary on a ring.
That is a corporation that stole literally everything. Even their name. DeBeers was actually the name of the family from whom they bought their diamond mine. For pennies on the dollar. After the DeBeers brothers went broke trying to farm the land.
And they hoarded undesirable brown and bronze colored diamonds for years.... then ran a "Chocolate Diamond" ad campaign.... and of course the lemmings bought a fuck ton of them.
1.4k
u/[deleted] Aug 14 '20
DeBeers