Bottom falls out on commodity made artifically rare through imperailism and corruption. Is this the part where I'm supposed to feel bad for De Beers?
To be fair, diamonds are indeed rare on earth. But what made diamond price come crashing is because we now managed to synthesise the diamonds. These "fake" diamonds flooded the market. This is good news so that we don't have to rely on exploitative extraction of the mineral.
Also because newer generations just aren't sold on diamonds being a luxury item anymore. Your average Joe just isn't paying their rent or more on a diamond engagement/wedding ring like they used to because, well, that's their rent payment or mortgage for something that's gonna lose value the second they walk out of the store.
They're not especially rare, not even gem-quality ones. For several generations, almost every married woman in a western country had a diamond on her finger of some size. They found plenty of them to serve that market. The mines created artificial scarcity by colluding together.
If lab grown had never happened, diamond mines might not have been able to serve industrial customers. Industrial customers don't care how it looks as long as it cuts, and so lab grown has been good enough for decades. Thus, you can get a two-pack 4.5 inch diamond angle grinder wheel at Home Depot for around twenty bucks.
The free market manages to solve a problem.
I wonder how much money it's going to cost the diamond lobby to un-solve it.
Good. Hope the whole industry goes bust.
Thank goodness, maybe I’ll finally be able to buy a diamond pickaxe for what few emeralds I have. I’ve been having to use stone tools in this economy and I’d really like some obsidian for a nether portal.
if you want to go to hell, just wait.
I’d really like some obsidian for a nether portal.
Water and lava buckets, you peasent
They said they were using stone tools. You think they'd have spare iron lying around for a bucket?
Name checks out...
Good. Fuck rich people.
Lab-grown rocks
When I was getting married a few years ago, I remember thinking fuck real diamonds lab-grown are literally the same thing. I remember getting some push back from some weirdos about how "real" diamonds are some how better or how people will think I'm a cheapskate or how people will feel bad for my wife...
Well, fast forward a few years and literally nobody cares, thinks about, or has said anything negative about my wife's ring. We are both 1000000% happy and satisfied with the decision to buy lab grown.
We said fuck diamonds entirely, even lab grown, and even had to go out of our way to find something that didnt have diamonds on it somehow
Fucking noice, dude. 👏 Honestly, yeah, why even diamonds. They brainwashed us good.
Women love diamonds for their wide range of industrial applications.
Like making pickaxes and mining obsidian?
I got us bare tungsten carbide bands. If "Diamonds are forever", then tungsten carbide is 9.5/10ths of forever, and it's the whole band instead of just a small easily-detachable part of it. More practically, it won't get beat to hell like the white gold ring from my first marriage. Plus, if I ever need a really strong connector for jury-rigging something, I'm now carrying one with me at all times!
I bet there still over priced.
No, I bet they are.
Finally, rocks might be worth what rocks are worth.
I'd buy more diamonds, but I spent all my money on avocado toast.
I respect jewelers and stonesetters as an art, but the rock itself has negative value in my eyes.
There's nothing wrong with orderly carbon. There's more than a few things wrong with Debeers
Literal monopoly company should have been banned from imports to the US dozens of years ago.
yeah, like the heat conduction thing is super cool, and the ability to scratch literally anything, while not particularly useful, is still pretty neat
I bet once diamonds get cheap enough CPU manufacturers will start using them as heat spreaders on their high end chips
The rock is quite useful as an industrial tool. It's when you cut it in to a fancy shape and wear it that it's pretty useless.
We use diamonds to test the hardness of materials, grind really hard things smaller, orient and locate specialized cutting tools, and cut through really hard things. Hell we sell garnet by the barrel to help cut through regular materials. Orderly carbon or, in many cases orderly aluminum oxide, is something we need a lot of. The price going down on those is actually good for manufacturing.
I'd like to see new uses for diamonds that take advantage of their material properties. For example, the thermal conductivity of diamonds is very high.
Industrial diamonds have always been on the cheap and that industry is far removed from the jewelry/gem industry, in fact a large majority of diamonds that are mined aren't gem grade, they're industrial grade. It's been growing and advancing despite the jewelry/gem market starting to fall.
and their hardness makes them useful in all saw-blades or drill-bits
Diamond thermal paste is out there. It's okay, but like most thermal paste (besides liquid metal, which has its own issues), it doesn't give extraordinary results over anything else. People tend to really overthink thermal paste; it's going to give you maybe 4 extra degrees C, and that's already pushing it.
Graphene is an even better thermal conductor, and heat pipes are tons better than either. There's some work out there on enhancing heat pipes with graphene.
i never understood why a mined diamond has a bigger value than an artificially made one when the only difference is the suffering of the workers. ppl who like diamonds are stupid.
There is this idea that seems to be really pervasive that natural is always better. And it's not true so often. A common example I like to give is that natural almond extract contains cyanide and artificial almond extract does not. No, it isn't enough cyanide to kill you, but I would say no cyanide is better than some cyanide.
And a lot of those "natural is always better" people would happily take fentanyl over willow bark if they were in agony.
I think a better analogy would be oxycodone or hydromorphone over opium but your point stands
Same reason diamonds are valued in the first place. Marketing campaigns tricking the gullible majority and most of the rest conforming to not stand out and cause issues for themselves.
Diamonds do make sense as gemstones because of their hardness. They'll stay scratch free for life. But ya, the diamond industry is garbage.
They're too common to be truly valuable, though, and that's before factoring in that you can just make them now.
The first thing DeBeers tried was "artificial diamonds have imperfections, you want a real rock that's selected to be as perfect as possible". Then the artificial industry made diamonds so good that you could only tell the difference from the lack of imperfections. Then DeBeers marketing changed to "it's too perfect, you want something that has the small imperfections of a natural process".
Artificially expensive shiny rocks less valuable than advertised.
Fun fact, reputable pawn shops don't pay for gemstones because they're effectively worthless. They only pay for previous metals. If you sell a wedding ring they'll only pay you what the metals are worth.
Not really. They will pay you as little as they can get away with. Often that's the value of the metals.
We'd much rather spend money on fabulous vacations or boring mortgages.
You know, it must be that food and rent are a bit higher priority than the pressure stones... especially when more and more people cant afford those... food and rent i mean.
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