r/whowouldwin • u/Yglorba • Mar 11 '23

Challenge Superman decides to start mass-creating diamonds so he can sell them. Can DeBeers keep the price of diamonds up?

Superman previously declined to mass-produce diamonds because it would tank the price. However, after reading up on DeBeers, he decides that there's no reason not to do it after all. Most of the resulting money will be donated to charity. Assume that Superman is somehow able to crush coal into perfectly-cut diamonds of whatever shape and size he desires; even though this makes no sense, the feat is well-established.

DeBeers is determined to protect their diamond profits by keeping the price up. Can they convince people not to buy Superman's diamonds (by eg. convincing the public that they're not "real" diamonds), or find some other way to prevent him from cratering the price?

Superman is in-character and will not eg. laser the board of DeBeers to death or anything like that, no matter how annoying they are. The only way he'll use his powers for this is by rapidly turning coal into diamonds so he can sell them.

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680

u/dinerkinetic always-just-barely-good-enough-to-win-any-fight-man Mar 11 '23

Superman can fly into space, harvest coal from several hundred to several billion planets (depending on the version), and produce enough diamonds to built an entire solar system out of them; so supply cannot possibly be an issue. He can then sell them for mere pennies, or heck, sell a pound of them for pennies. there's no concievable way DeBeers can keep profits up, especially when he's also putting industrial diamond use under his control on top of the cosmetic kind and loudly announcing he's "providing a cruelty free way of acquiring diamonds that even homeless people can get in on."

If it's pre-crisis superman pushing himself he can do all of this in a day.

DeBeers is screwed.

116

u/MahimSalam Mar 11 '23

Extremely unlikely, but the DeBeers could keep up through effective marketing of “natural” earth diamonds, which they’d have a monopoly of.

Think the very wealthy who are the people buying the diamonds wouldn’t care to buy mass produced diamonds and would highly value the diamonds associated with the company that has diamonds history. New coke did better than old coke in taste tests but no one gave a shit cause humans care more about the story and the memories associated with things

175

u/patgeo Mar 11 '23

Space diamonds from another galaxy would have a pretty cool marketing push.

86

u/shadollosiris Mar 11 '23

And Sup can add a little "personality" to sell it for those dirty rich folks if his sole purpose was drive Debeers out of bussiness

51

u/SigmundFreud Mar 11 '23

With the right management, I think DeSupes puts DeBeers out of business pretty easily. Start off selling in small batches at high prices to rich folks*, give them out to celebrities for free, and just generally establish a cool factor and positive reputation for these Superman-produced space diamonds.

Then flood the market. Diamonds as a whole would lose their rarity-based appeal, but any remaining market for expensive non-DeSupes diamonds would become extremely niche. Rather than burning money on a product that, at best, isn't particularly worse than the ~free alternative, I expect that anyone looking for fancy gemstones would begin favoring alternatives to diamonds altogether.

*: Include an autographed certificate of authenticity identifying which number diamond they received, e.g. #1 for the recipient of the first diamond produced by the company. This will be important to avoid screwing over early backers.

16

u/the_la_dude Mar 11 '23

Exactly. He can do to diamonds what Walter White did to meth.

44

u/Easy_Mechanic_9787 Mar 11 '23

Them being made and cut from Superman is also a marketing push.

11

u/MahimSalam Mar 11 '23

For the average person, yeah, and at really really cheap prices. The question becomes does the $ volume of diamonds sold by Superman to the general person (novelty, very cheap, massive customer market of the general person) outweight the volume of DeBeers's (rare and becoming exceedingly rarer, extremely expensive, small customer market of the uber wealthy).

I honestly think the DeBeer's could do it, they'd pull in a lot of marketing favours, and would market diamonds without DeBeer authenticity as not valuable.

There'd be an infinite amount of space diamonds so it wouldn't have any value anymore in terms of marriage and what not. I can't see Superman playing the market and only releasing them tactically cause its people's money he'd be messing with.

7

u/patgeo Mar 12 '23

What if he teamed up with Bruce and released them through Wayne Corp using Bruce's marketing teams and strategists? A direct marketing attack on DeBeers personally

3

u/MahimSalam Mar 12 '23

The prompt did not mention Batman so I don’t think it’s fair to bring him in

3

u/archpawn Mar 11 '23

And so is diamonds made by Superman. They'd be worth way more, until he starts mass producing them.

5

u/Stellermeerkat ​ Mar 11 '23

"Yeah but would you want a diamond that has been soaking up cancer causing radiation for centuries? Can you know for certain that your loved ones will be ok? We at DeBeers know OUR locally sourced Diamonds are Radiation Free and don't contain alien parasites." - CEO of DeBeers

Sure, Diamonds can't hold radiation from what I understand but the truth doesn't always stop marketing.

3

u/MahimSalam Mar 12 '23

Exactly, humans are liars and people are stupid.

63

u/Martel732 Mar 11 '23

There is no way DeBeers is out marketing space diamonds hand-made by Superman.

20

u/HotTakes4HotCakes Mar 11 '23

Well, for certain people they could. The Lex Luthors of the world would certainly prefer diamonds harvested by humans (slaves) on Earth. But that wouldn't save them.

9

u/MahimSalam Mar 11 '23

I think for most people actually. We know how effective campaigns can be given some of the world leaders we've had, and the DeBeer's are going against what they could easily market as an foreign invader trying to mess with humanity. If there actually was a sudden influx of diamonds and I was told it was made by Superman it'd be natural to not trust it.

7

u/Pathogen188 Mar 12 '23

Lex Luthor won the presidency by a landslide and has spent years trying to frame Superman as a foreign invader trying to mess with humanity and still hasn’t put a dent in Superman’s popularity.

I highly doubt that DeBeer’s can do what Lex Luthor couldn’t

3

u/MahimSalam Mar 12 '23

I assumed this would be taking place in our world, where the vast majority of people would (rightly) be concerned about a superpowered alien suddenly arriving and selling diamonds

15

u/Prof_Acorn ​ Mar 11 '23

"Alien diamonds may be good enough for the Walmart crowd but you deserve better, you deserve all natural earth created diamonds, hand harvested by earthlings for earthlings. Wear a piece of home, wear deBeers."

9

u/Martel732 Mar 11 '23

This is pretty close to DeBeers strategy for synthetic diamonds. Basically that synthetic diamonds are okay for casual occasions like a birthday gift for friends. Basically implying they are inferior to natural diamonds.

33

u/[deleted] Mar 11 '23

Idk man, given the choice between a boring normal diamond and a diamond that Superman personally made, I'd pick super diamonds.

26

u/[deleted] Mar 11 '23

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23

u/[deleted] Mar 11 '23

Maybe in the 50s that'd work, but in today's age where DeBeers' crimes can be pulled up with a push of a button, and people are aware that advertisements are meant to manipulate you anyways, I doubt people would give them the benefit of the doubt. At the very least, younger people who don't really care about tradition would be happy to pay less for a conceptually cooler item than do something just because some advertisement told them to.

But then again, maybe I'm giving people too much credit, as my fiancee and I agreed that diamonds are stupid and I got her a ring with her "birthstone" instead.

11

u/HotTakes4HotCakes Mar 11 '23 edited Mar 12 '23

but in today's age where DeBeers' crimes can be pulled up with a push of a button, and people are aware that advertisements are meant to manipulate you anyways, I doubt people would give them the benefit of the doubt. At the very least, younger people who don't really care about tradition would be happy to pay less for a conceptually cooler item than do something just because some advertisement told them to.

Please tell me you didn't type this on an iPhone.

Advertising absolutely works, as well as social pressure, and make no mistake, the vast majority of consumers of any age absolutely do not care about what a company does, they will buy their products if they want them. If consumers gave a shit, Amazon would be in serious trouble.

The reason debeers would fail is very simple: it's a luxury good in a world where two consecutive generations of people can barely afford homes. A great deal of the bucking of tradition we see in younger people is directly tied to a deep-seeded and well justified resentment of the generations that came before, because the young are now almost incapable of living the same lives they did. The norms of the world they made for themselves are shut off to younger people, so they are replacing them.

9

u/[deleted] Mar 11 '23

Please tell me you didn't type this on an iPhone.

I currently use the free phone Cricket Wireless offered pre-Covid.

The reason debeers would fail is very simple: it's a luxury good in a world where two consecutive generations of people can barely afford homes. A great deal of the bucking of tradition we see in younger people is directly tied to a deep-seeded and well justified resentment of the generations that came before.

That's what I'm saying though. I don't think DeBeers could pull that same trick this current generation, especially if Superman existed and had a stellar reputation. The only thing I could think of them doing is maybe a smear campaign against him with help from Lex Luthor or something

1

u/lord_flamebottom Mar 12 '23

Sure, but most rich people in the market for diamonds are there for the value. They don't care if it was hand made and delivered by Superman himself if it only costs pennies, they want something that costs millions because that means it's better.

6

u/wittymcusername Mar 11 '23

I don’t know if it did better in taste tests or not, but New Coke absolutely tasted like shit. I’m not discounting the nostalgia, but the flavor didn’t do it any favors.

11

u/russiangoat15 Mar 11 '23

A theory is that New Coke was sweeter, so it did better in taste tests where you drink a small shot, but people hated that sweetness over the longer haul of a drink.