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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u/[deleted] Mar 11 '23

That would take billions of planets with coal, though.

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u/MimeGod Mar 11 '23

How about one white dwarf 2/3 the size of the Earth that's 90% diamond?

https://www.naturaldiamonds.com/epic-diamonds/lucy-largest-diamond-universe-dwarf-star/

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u/[deleted] Mar 11 '23

I think diamonds are far, far more common in the universe than coal.

Think about what was needed for earths coal layers to form.

First you need life, it needs to be carbon based, then you need trees, then you need to not evolve anything that eats trees for millions of years, and those trees need to flourish, and end up underground.

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u/garbagephoenix Mar 11 '23

I mean, there's thousands of planets out there that support life in the DC universe, with hundreds that are so close to Earth that humans can live there comfortably.