
Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? - mishmax
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/4575/
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pbiggar
A few years ago, my girlfriend and I had an argument about this article and
the book it came from. I flat refused to buy diamonds, and obviously she
wanted a beautiful engagement ring. The compromise we came to was that if it
wasn't a diamond, then it better be fucking amazing, preferably with a yellow
saffire.

Long story short, I'm currently on my honeymoon, and her yellow saffire ring
blows everyone away.

If your girlfriend turns you down for lack of a diamond, you have probably
chosen poorly. However, she might (reasonably) turn you down if she's
dissappointed, so make your feelings known long in advance, or you might be in
trouble.

Get your rings at Brilliant Earth in SF (I did my shopping online, and was not
dissappointed). They are the only ethical jewelers I've found, and I looked
hard. My wife's ring has a large yellow saffire (fair trade from Sri Lanka,
mined from shallow mines with a low environmental impact), small diamonds from
Canada (sadly lab diamonds are not good enough for jewelry yet), and recycled
gold.

The ring is pretty unique, and utterly amazing, and I would recommend this
route for any ethically minded person.

~~~
Andys
She must be pretty damn happy with it, if you're getting away with browsing
news.yc whilst on honeymoon :)

~~~
maukdaddy
Gotta do something while......recovering...

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ortusdux
Fun fact: If you get a diamond nice and hot (blow torches work great) and then
drop it into some pure oxygen, it will burn like the hunk of charcoal it is.

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jacquesm
Spending insane amounts of money on a clump of carbon molecules to declare
your love seems to me extremely wasteful. If your s.o. really needs a display
of conspicuous consumption over spending your - now joint - funds carefully
and wisely you might want to talk it over. Easy come easy go, if you have
money left over to throw it out more power to you but most people are not in a
position to throw away money like this.

Congratulations to the DeBeers marketing department, they've done an excellent
job of making people believe this sort of stuff is needed.

~~~
derefr
Your point certainly sounds reasonable, but it's not how the human mind works.
The point of conspicuous consumption is to _make believe_ that the man is "in
a position to throw away money like this", because that (imaginary) man is
considered to be a good provider/sexually attractive. Talking about it
beforehand would be like telling your kids you were going to dress up as Santa
Claus to put presents under the tree—the reality is no different, but the
_fantasy_ is ruined.

And DeBeers certainly didn't _create_ the notion of conspicuous consumption as
a romantic gesture—women have been receiving silver and gold trinkets for
millennia, especially ones adorned with various gemstones. DeBeers just
popularized diamonds as the gem to be specifically associated with such
gestures—and they're a fairly effective/obvious one, too, since they're eye-
catching, distinctive, and easy to adorn oneself with.

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anxiousape
You are right that the fantasy needs to be played out and its duly mentioned
in the article about the woman already expecting a diamond even though the
diamond is a surprise gift. This suspense 'game' was what De Beers invented. I
mean they could have marketed black rock if it happened to be their line of
business.

~~~
derefr
> I mean they could have marketed black rock if it happened to be their line
> of business.

Well, if it happened to be their line of business, _and_ they had a monopoly
on the supply of it. It's hard to market things you can find in your back
yard.

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sliverstorm
Unfortunately, realizing this is not enough. You need your partner to realize
it too, or you're out of luck. Good luck presenting a ring of ruby or
sapphire; even though they are far prettier stones IMHO, every girl I've met
has diamonds stamped into her heart.

~~~
philwelch
This was an eye opening experience for me as a younger nerd, something that
taught me how truly irrational many humans are. Diamonds are clearly pretty,
but buying them props up a cartel and indirectly leads to warfare,
enslavement, and death. Clearly a young woman would happily understand why I
would have ethical objections to this...

...and to this day, I don't understand how some people's minds even work. (It
was a hypothetical discussion and my life wasn't appreciably derailed by this
conversation, it's just memorable to me because of the utter incomprehension I
felt.)

~~~
steve19
It also of course, provides legitimate employment to __a lot __of people
throughout Africa.

If people stopped buying diamonds, it would be a disaster for the continent.

Saying that, I still would hate to buy something that may have been mined by a
slave and purchased by a cartel.

~~~
philwelch
If you want to look at the bigger systemic effects, they are these: Africa's
very richness in easily exploitable natural resources is _exactly_ the reason
there is so much warfare and violence.

There's really no gain to capture economic centers in developed parts of the
world, because they do things like finance or entrepreneurship or software
which are actually dependent on a stable settled population in a consistent
legal system. That's why despite all the gangsters in LA, they just sell drugs
instead of taking over Hollywood by force and trying to profit from the film
industry. Even when gangsters take something over in this country, it's
through infiltration rather than mounting a physical invasion of the city.

African gangsters (better known as "rebels", "paramilitary groups", etc.), on
the other hand, can actually take over a diamond mine or something and collect
all of the income relatively quickly. Crush the demand for diamonds, and the
diamond-rich parts of Africa become that much more stable just because they'll
have to work harder to generate wealth. And then, maybe, it won't be
worthwhile for the paramilitaries and rebels to attack it.

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jleader
This article appears to be an excerpt from a longer book on the subject:
Epstein, Edward Jay (1982). "THE DIAMOND INVENTION"

The author has a website,
<http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/prologue.htm> with what appears to be
the complete contents of the book. I don't know if he's updated it since 1982.

~~~
pbiggar
Epic book, worth a read if anyone enjoyed the article.

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jpablo
Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1110283>

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stbal
I'm amazed in general at the amount of conformity in people surrounding the
whole topic of weddings. Not just the ring (btw, diamond rings for engagement
is an American cultural thing as far as I know, in Europe the props are
different), but the whole dress code and the mandatory steps involved in the
event. Wasn't the future supposed to free us from such conventions? I find it
funny especially with people who laugh at religious functions as superstition,
and then they embrace a totally arbitrary set of made up rules.

~~~
henrikschroder
Well, rites are important to us as social beings, and we make them elaborate
and heavy with tradition so they feel more important. We've always had them,
regardless of religion. There's always a need to mark the occasions of births,
adulthood, partnership and death.

Add a bit of capitalist profit-hunger, and you end up with companies doing
everything they can to maximize the money people spend on the rites, by
manipulating the cultural expectations.

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drcode
note that this article is from the 1980s, not recent (though still accurate)

~~~
w00pla
Yeah. The article should maybe deal in depth with the start of De Beers.

De Beers was basically formed by an English colonialist (Cecil John Rhodes).
He controlled a company which basically owned a country
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_South_Africa_Company>).

He also had his own private army and tried to overthrow a sovereign government
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid>).

~~~
cromulent
Rhodesia was named for him. He also set up the Rhodes Scholarship, which
enabled people like Bill Clinton and Bob Hawke to go to Oxford.

~~~
w00pla
Just because he set up a scholarship in his name doesn't make the things he
did any better.

One of the aims of the Rhodes scholarship is Anglicization. A person who did
not study in English cannot apply (even though he is fluent).

Until recently they also excluded women.

In any cases, the legacy of Rhodes is despicable - even if he left behind a
scholarship program. His creation of the state of Zimbabwe (with two different
ethnic groups) results in problems to this day.

~~~
cromulent
"Just because he set up a scholarship in his name doesn't make the things he
did any better."

I don't think I was suggesting that it did.

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paulgerhardt
Relevant article on the synthetic diamond trade from Wired last year:
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html>

edit: oops I mean 2003; 11.09 was the issue number

~~~
steve19
Does anybody know where I could buy a synthetic clear diamond?

~~~
pbiggar
They don't come any larger than 0.3 karats, which is too small for a
solitaire. You can't get them to match either, which makes them bad for side
stones. I tried.

A good alternative is Canadian diamonds, which are not owned by DeBeers, not
mined or polished by slaves, and not the cause of any conflict. That solves
about half the problems with diamonds.

Get them from Brilliant Earth (I'm not employed there, just a very satisfied
customer.)

~~~
Rod
LifeGem sells synthetic diamonds in the .20 to .99 carat range. Either your
claim is wrong, or LifeGem are crooks,

~~~
pbiggar
It must be my claim which is wrong. I was recounting what a sales person told
me. It might instead be that they don't supply them, or might just have been
an outright lie.

That said, a one karat stone is no good as a solitaire (the book from the
article above talks about this: one karat stones all go into eternity rings,
which were invented by debeers due to a massive oversupply of Russian one
karat stones. Actually, the book implies that these stones may have been lab
stones, as no-one knew where the Russians got so many one karat stones from.)

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steve19
My favorite quote from the article ...

"Watts found that the diamond had mysteriously shrunk in weight to 1.04
carats. One of the jewelers had apparently switched diamonds during the
appraisal"

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raintrees
Single page version: [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/1982/02/have-
you-e...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/1982/02/have-you-ever-
tried-to-sell-a-diamond/4575/)

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lutorm
My fiancee and I had this discussion too. In the end, we decided to forego
engagement rings all together and just go with a nice set of tungsten carbide
wedding bands.

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10ren
de beers + venter + toxo = bacteria designed to modify your buying behaviour.

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noonespecial
Its been a fantastic fad while it lasts (lasted?) but in the end its always
just been "Vans off the wall" for "big people".

I wonder what we'll use next. I've always wanted to give my wife a ring with a
bit of a meteorite set in it because, hey, its from _outer space_. Where does
one find such things?

~~~
Dove
These guys were able to procure some to make dice. You might start by sending
them a note and/or following up on the source they mention.

[http://crystalcaste.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Sto...](http://crystalcaste.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=CC&Product_Code=02152S&Category_Code=XS)

~~~
nitrogen
The banner at the top of the site boasts about winning a lawsuit to prevent
someone else (Hasbro) from creating similarly-shaped dice, but the shapes look
like they would have ancient origins. Not exactly my kind of company.

~~~
Dove
Heh. Well, I'm not suggesting he work for them. Just that they may know
something about how to procure meteorites. To by knowledge, it's not a big
company, so they might be friendly.

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CulturalNgineer
The lesson here is how co-ordinated messaging (propaganda) can continually
shape and re-shape broad cultural memes no matter how stupid the memes are.

While in the case of diamonds it's a matter of wasting money, encouraging
inane consumerism and odious environmental practices for the sake of a few
wealthy oligarchs...

When the same thing happens in politics...

It encourages meaningless consumerism and odious environmental practices for
the sake of a few wealthy oligarchs.

The Lesson: Distrust messages from oligarchs.

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Jeema3000
If it were the other way around: if women had to buy something in order to
gain a man's affection and commitment, it would be considered a servile and
sexist tradition. Yet somehow the tradition of men buying expensive engagement
rings for women survives. I say the heck with that. If she gets an expensive
ring, then I want an expensive ring too. Equal rights! :)

~~~
jedberg
I bought her a ring and then she bought me a TV and surround sound system. I
get a hot tub later. Then we'll be about even. :)

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Lendal
Have you ever tried to convince a woman of this truth about diamonds?

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jackfoxy
Interesting, but too long for me to read right now. Does anyone know why De
Beers seems to be exempt from U.S. anti-trust laws?

~~~
gojomo
There's a longstanding case still bouncing around the court system:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers_Diamonds_Antitrust_Lit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers_Diamonds_Antitrust_Litigation)

~~~
illumin8
"The settlement provides $295 million to purchasers of diamonds and diamond
jewelry, including $130 million to consumers."

Does anyone think it seems like a very low number? Just $130 million for
consumers, considering the cartel has been operating for decades and brought
in billions?

~~~
gojomo
Sounds low to me. And the agreement not to monopolize sounds flimsy. But I'm
sure the class action legal firms did just fine.

~~~
gwern
It's really low, when you remember that antitrust violations carry triple
damages, not just single. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Damages>)

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Chirael
This link should have had (1982) after the title. Read the whole article only
to be very disappointed that it only covered up to 1982 - wtf?

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anxiousape
There are some things you don't learn in college... like the truth about these
pieces of carbon

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w33dkid
Never even seen one, and I dont get i why diamonds and gold are given so much
value. Its true if someone said... the market is driven by women.

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erlanger
Pop history of the diamond trade.

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rman666
I'm worried it'd fly up my nose! Oh, "sell," not "smell!" My mistake.

