Buying diamonds has always been expensive, but selling them, is another matter, entirely.
Also, deBeers invented the diamond wedding ring fairly recently. My mother’s wedding ring was a big-ass sapphire. If you look at classical wedding rings, they are often non-diamond stones.
The DeBeers campaign that boosted the already significant popularity of diamond engagement rings was in 1947. I don't think diamonds or other gemstones on wedding (as opposed to engagement) rings have ever been a major thing (though I'm sure some people do that.)
Tiffany, I think, did a big push a few decades before that did a lot for the popularity of diamond engagement rings among the middle class, and diamond engagement rings had been popular among the upper class since something like the Victorian era.
As far as I know, diamonds have been a big deal as engagement stones for a long time, but their role as exclusive stones, is pretty recent.
Also probably due in part to what's been called the best advertising slogan of the 20th century: "A Diamond is Forever" [0]. The implication being that you're not supposed to sell (or buy) a used diamond.
Perhaps to have a jeweller set it in a different setting?
Check with the recipient beforehand, of course. You're not the one who has to wear it, and no amount of logic is going to change a mind that wants a brand new, natural diamond.
It's so weird a product marketet like this even got any popularity within "normal" people.
you typically buy jewelry with a diamond in it. the jewler could gave bought it new or pried it out of an old ring. How would you know ? (and why would anyone care?)
Precisely.
And on top of that some jewelry stores are worried that customers would consider a below wholesale offer to be insulting, so they often refuse to buy piece back at all.
No one wants to buy used diamonds.
> No one wants to buy used diamonds.
It was not a switch that was pushed the moment the movie went out. In the grand scheme of things, the movie was not even that popular. But there definitely was a realisation that diamond prices were completely artificially inflated by an oligopoly, and that there were many issues with how they were sourced.
Just because demand did not follow a step function when the file was released does not imply that ethics are not relevant.
That is popular by any reasonable definition.
The movie exposed an opportunity - what if we could have diamonds without the oppression? Oppression is very high cost.
Yes — industry. From Wikipedia:
> Eighty percent of mined diamonds (equal to about 135,000,000 carats (27,000 kg) annually) are unsuitable for use as gemstones and are used industrially.[131] In addition to mined diamonds, synthetic diamonds found industrial applications almost immediately after their invention in the 1950s; in 2014, 4,500,000,000 carats (900,000 kg) of synthetic diamonds were produced, 90% of which were produced in China. Approximately 90% of diamond grinding grit is currently of synthetic origin.[132]
> ...
> Industrial use of diamonds has historically been associated with their hardness, which makes diamond the ideal material for cutting and grinding tools. As the hardest known naturally occurring material, diamond can be used to polish, cut, or wear away any material, including other diamonds. Common industrial applications of this property include diamond-tipped drill bits and saws, and the use of diamond powder as an abrasive.
As your quote points out, synthetic industrial diamonds have been available for many decades. But it is only recently that synthetic diamond gems have achieved popularity and price advantage for jewelry.
(Patents were really strong back then. Howard Hughes, Sr. became the richest man in the world by buying the patent for the drill bit. He then manufactured bits and rented them out for a fraction of the profits from the oil well.)
[1] https://www.slb.com/products-and-services/innovating-in-oil-...
[2] https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/texas-primer-the-hu...
Diamonds are used in all kinds of things besides jewelry. Industry needs that economy of scale.
But there are also applications for larger flawless crystals in things like diamond windows, semiconductor substrate and microtomes. Recently you can even buy a diamond 3D printer nozzle for extruding abrasive materials like carbon fibre. These require better processes than the ones that churn out abrasive diamonds.
The mining, corrupt trade practices, etc are all well known and sometimes subject to enforcement action.
The thing about today is many pale aren’t seater horse beliefs and preferences (“trends”) can be manufactured.
Social media is a different kind of amplifier the past few years.
See also: views on climate change, adoption of renewable energy, etc.
So is our conclusion "People talk a big game but their morality clearly fails based on how the market has played out" or "People want things but the market has competing forces and sometimes takes a long time to find ways to provide people what they want?"
My rephrasing to your statement is "It took the mass market decades to figure out how to deliver consumers the solar/electric cars they wanted at a price they could afford."
Also, points in the general direction of the established energy providers I think these assholes had some incentive not to let the market get out from under them and make sure they were the ones who continued to profit from it.
Nicely stated. I like your style of debate / deliberation.
If ethical mining were an issue today would they lay down their devices that use critical minerals?
Solar energy was quite expensive until recently to improve adoption.
People accumulate wealth over a life time of work. It would be entirely expect that younger generations have less wealth than older generations.
This tracks with broad trends of wealth inequality increasing as well.
So no, it's not just "they haven't accumulated yet", because it's not clear they will have the opportunity to do so.
Source? The data I’ve seen indicate the median millennial is wealthier than the median boomer was at their age.
Boomers held significantly higher percentages of capital than millenials or genx holding age steady.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27123
Studies have shown wealth declining for millenials while increasing for boomers.
https://www.self.inc/info/generational-wealth-gap/
And it's across multiple forms of wealth.
Most of it is earned over time.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/community-development/publication...
"While trailing Gen Xers for the beginning of their adult lives, younger American households’ average wealth began to exceed that of Gen Xers at about age 30, reflecting historically high wealth levels following the COVID-19 pandemic." I have a feeling that average wealth adjustment falls very heavily on the home owners, which is only just above half of all the cohort. Had a similar thing happened to boomers in 89, almost 70% would have benefitted.
I think it's also worth pointing out: The share of wealth held by boomers in 89 (why 89? Because they didn't have data before that. It's why the graphs start in a weird spot and why it's not a great study unless you're trying to pull out a "gotcha" stat) represented almost 20% of the total wealth in the country. "Millenials/GenZ" has a hold on only HALF that percentage.
Doctors may hate your one weird statistic, but socio-demographists probably don't...
This is also true for other generations.
Boomers have had significantly longer and better sustained market conditions to grow their wealth.
Some of us old-heads got pushed much farther left as a result of this. I used to be a Democrat, blue and blue. These days I'm much more like, "The Dems will sell me out to make a buck, I gotta go out and actually be the change I want to see in the world."
Young folks who are experiencing disillusion -- don't give in to despair. You can make a meaningful difference in lives. Build communities, engage in mutual aid, whatever.
Where people are waiting for change and the movement, they don’t realize they are the change and the movement.
Now would be a terrible time to become disillusioned and despairing, after winning all those important battles. It proves that idealism works, and we really need it for current and future battles! It's the nihilistic disillusioned people who are CAUSING all the problems.
In so many aspects of life, I've noticed how there's always something devastatingly discouraging that happens right before any major successful breakthrough.
It's as if God's being a dick, and always throws something profoundly disheartening at you right on the precipice of success, just so he can laugh at you for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
I now recognize that as a sign I'm just about to succeed, and shouldn't give up no matter what.
We are living through that kind of historic transition right now, watching MAGA finally turn on Trump. Don't fuck it up by giving up now!
Doesn't that show younger generations have a markable improvement in "being good"?
... or so populist messaging from the Right would have you believe.
I was a center-left socialist as a kid and I'm a full blown anarchist in my 40's so, idk, "people aren't a monolith"?
Here’s just one sellers assortment of various “roughs” https://www.gemsngems.com/product-category/rough-stones/lab-...
As someone who doesn’t care about the authenticity of the gems provenance and only about having consistent physical properties for rock tumbling and gem faceting, it’s been very nice for the budget
But in any case, these aren’t mutually exclusive. People want conflict free diamonds but not to spend a years pay getting one.
When prices are equal, I'd wager the decision is: "if prices are equal why wouldn't I buy the "real" thing? I'll just try and justify to myself that it's sourced correctly".
When the price of the grown diamonds falls, the decision might be: "Ok, so grown diamonds are cheaper AND more ethical? Ok, I'm definitely buying grown".
If the ethics factor didn't exist, "real" diamonds would still retain the kudos and still be valued highly over "nice but fake" diamonds.
It's the ethics factor that pushes the decision over the line.
As an n=1 economic animal, that's what my behaviour would have been anyway.
And it's all marketing anyway: slap a "condensed from pure carbon" campaign out there and suddenly natural diamonds are fake rich and not as pure or precise or something.
Now sure, this concept was manufactured to a great extent through marketing, and it can be replaced or just fall out of favor. But established culture changes very slowly, and there's no "other gemstones cartel" to throw money at this the way DeBeers did to establish the diamond engagement ring in the first place.
Other people would still assume you might have bought a blood diamond, so instead of buying a lab diamond, I would expect these people to have bought another gem if they bought a gemstone at all.
Yet in the end she still wanted to get a ring from one of the big names because that’s what she grew up with and what she had always dreamt of since young.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The irony is that as synthetic diamonds become indistinguishable from naturals, the price will plummet over time.
Virtue-signaling has always been a thing, and apparently quite useful for marketing to certain segments of the population.
I wonder if my spreadsheet still exists.
Also recent synthetic diamonds adding some kind of a marker to the synthetic diamond.
Today it makes one think there’s likely synthetic diamonds mixed in with real ones somewhere.
It's more status-forward than authenticity-forward consumption, and many jewelers can assure you that it's very much still in vogue in some areas.
Getting married is less common which in of itself is a huge reduction to diamond jewelry demand. Of course there’s probably some town that marriage is at an all time high.
Is it possible that people decreased purchases of diamonds altogether in response to ethical qualms (in favor of other jewels or precious items), and then were later motivated by price to go with lab-grown diamonds?
Natural diamonds are more expensive, and they therefore have a conspicuous consumption element to them. That could be valuable as a means to gain social cachet. Except you'd have to speak loudly about how they were natural.
And in doing so you are loudly proclaiming you don't care about human suffering it took to get the diamonds. That's probably fine in very wealthy circles, but in upper middle class/upper-upper middle class circles, it's likely quite gauche.
If the natural ones didn't have this faux pas attached to them by default, then they might carry more interest as a "I saved up for these" class indicator.
I've never understood this really because no-one carries their GIA certificate with them. With the existence of moissanite and artificial stones, it should be a "market for lemons" situation where a given stone on someone's finger is assumed low-value by default.
They were simply dismissed as more trash belonging in the gold-plated case. It's hard to appreciate how much less informed people were back then - we're talking pre-internet. The adults around me couldn't explain scientifically what the actual difference was between a CZ and natural diamond. Just one was a fake, held little value, and was a sure way to lose your fiance.
edit: seems that moissanite (silicon carbide, perhaps unsurprisingly) is another diamond-like (though hexagonal crystals vs. cubic for diamond or CZ) gemstone that is actually harder than sapphire and less prone to fracture than diamond.
If we're talking about 'quality', CZ just doesn't compare for longevity. That said, unless you're talking about a daily-wearing-for-many-years piece of jewelry (i.e., an engagement ring), CZ is just fine for most folks, especially considering the cost difference.
> The adults around me couldn't explain scientifically what the actual difference was between a CZ and natural diamond.
I was told growing up you can just check with window glass. If the gem scratches it's CZ and if the glass scratches it's diamond.
CZ is very cheap costume jewelry and won't last as it scratches and dulls so easily
one of the victims said she had doubted the ring he gave her was real, but he just scratched a mirror with it to prove it was real. Then she said "it was only later after he left that I found cz can also scratch glass"
This matches my experience with people, including myself. I think it's about the feedback. The price pain or the energy pain is readily and immediately felt, whereas ethics violations are not, as people are shielded from the impact externally, and have many defenses against it internally as well.
But at the end of the day, they always do the exact same thing - buy whatever is cheaper. Doesn't matter if it's produced with slave labor, or child labor, or the product of corporate government coups.
They put all that out of their mind, and just buy the product. They rationalize it or conveniently forget it or just pretend it doesn't apply to them. Whatever will get them past it.
A similar topic: Does anyone think things like solar and wind are being used out of the goodness of anyone's heart? Concern for the next generations? A desire to give clean air to our youth? Sympathy for sufferers of all of the horrible diseases and respiratory problems? Concern about lands lost to rising seas?
No. It's because they got cheaper than fossil fuels. Anything else is fantasy.
Solar PV: https://research.chalmers.se/publication/520553/file/520553_...
EVs: https://ia600108.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/24...
Renewable energy premiums: https://research-hub.nrel.gov/en/publications/will-consumers...
Fair Trade: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Shared%20Documents/conferences/2...
What I find most interesting is the weight put on the ethical side. I think it’s overstated. When the issue became big, the Blood Diamond movie, sales of lab grown did not markedly increase. It took another decade or so to become more prevalent. What changed over that time is the price, IIRC the price was comparable to natural at the time the movie came out. Ethics were not compelling enough for most people at that price. When prices got about 50% of natural, it became much more compelling. Now that it’s around 10%, it’s practically so compelling that buying natural isn’t even a real consideration for many people.
Anyways, I think people use the Blood Diamond talking point as a socially acceptable reason- it’s what they tell their parents and grandparents who might judge them- but in reality it’s almost completely a financial decision. If the tables were turned and natural diamonds became 1/10th the cost of lab grown, the market would completely flip back practically overnight.