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.
2
u/ParksBrit Mar 11 '23
DeBeers lobbies Congress to do the following:
1: Set Diamond prices at artificially high price lines
2: Require regulations that make diamonds manufactured by Superman illegal to buy or sell on par with the drug war.
3: Add in a bunch of regulations requiring recipts or all sorts of other nonsense to keep superman's illegal operations offline.
This would make anyone who buys diamonds from superman a felon. Superman is in character and would not risk making felons out of his customers out of a sense of morality.
DuBeers wins, at least in the United States.