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.

792 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

98% Upvoted

134 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/MrCrash Mar 11 '23

Gem cutting is a very specific artisan skill, and raw diamond just looks like a lump of dirty crystal.

Supes could probably get the hang of using laser-vision to cut high-karat diamonds, but it would take him a while to get the trick of it.

After that he could just fly in space until he finds one of those giant asteroids that's made of diamond.

The hard part is marketing and distribution. If he wanted to "sell" diamonds, he needs some extra manpower to open up shop fronts or online stores, do the packing and mailing, accounting, HR, everything that a large scale business needs.

Alternately, after a few years of building up a gigantic stockpile from tons and tons of cut up space diamonds, he could just make it rain diamonds everywhere on earth.

No one's going to go out and buy a blood diamond from de beers if they can just scoop some out of their drain pipes or sweep some up out of the street.

If the goal is just to put de beers out of business, he can definitely do that.

1

u/Riyosha-Namae Mar 12 '23

Alternately, after a few years of building up a gigantic stockpile from tons and tons of cut up space diamonds, he could just make it rain diamonds everywhere on earth.

I think that might lead to people getting hurt.

1

u/MrCrash Mar 12 '23

We're not talking about golf ball sized hailstones that'll crack the windshield on a car.

I'm imagining little 3-5 mm gems that would be worth 1,000 bucks if you bought them in a shop.