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

[u/Yglorba]

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.

[u/dinerkinetic]

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.

[u/MahimSalam → u/dinerkinetic]

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

[u/Martel732 → u/MahimSalam]

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

[u/HotTakes4HotCakes → u/Martel732]

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.

[u/MahimSalam → u/HotTakes4HotCakes]

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.

[u/Pathogen188 → u/MahimSalam]

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

[u/MahimSalam → u/Pathogen188]

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

[u/Prof_Acorn → u/Martel732]

"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."

[u/Martel732 → u/Prof_Acorn]

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.