
When Gold Isn’t Worth the Price - sharp11
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/07/opinion/when-gold-isnt-worth-the-price.html?_r=0
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elipsey
This is not soley a trade off between job creation and "environmentalism", and
resource extraction is not always net win for a local economy.

Also, public land is involved, so consider that the public has a legitimate
interest in the outcome then it might not have in interfering with a mutually
agreed upon transaction between private parties.

There is a lot of money to be made from resource extraction, but most of it
does not accrue to workers or local residents. In many cases, employment
increases for a while, which benefits a minority of citizens while the
external costs of business are socialized, and then eventually the part of the
resource that is cost-effective to capture is exhausted, commodity prices
change, or for whatever reason production stops.

Meanwhile, there has been less incentive for the state to develop a diverse
economy based on taxing earned income then there would have been without the
income from selling extraction rights, and everyone who lives near the project
is back where they started: the jobs are gone, but the public is often left
with a big mess to clean up. In addition there are other major employment
sectors and stakeholders that may be negatively impacted, such as fisheries
and tourism, and legally guaranteed native subsistence rights. In other words,
the kind of industry often results in a "resouce cursed" economy and polity.

I grew up in Alaska, and I own land in Southwestern Alaska. There was a closed
mine in my home town. The reality of the situation is, the resource is so
valuable that as a political matter, it's virtually impossible for state or
local residents to prevent the state from selling extraction rights on public
land because the local citizens can't compete financially with an out of state
lobby. Several of our state politicians have been convicted of accepting
bribes from private companies. There is simply so much money to be made that
extraction projects on public land are almost inevitable, with or without the
consent of the public.

I'm not certainly not opposed in general to mining or oil production, but if
the resource is public, the decision should be made democratically.

Should the state sell mineral rights on public land if the majority of it's
population doesn't want to? Shouldn't people who live near the public land get
a vote?

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throwaway2048
How much impact would this have? Being as gold is a fully fungible commodity,
wouldn't the "bad gold" simply end up in bullion/coins/gold bars, and the gold
that otherwise would have been used end up in jewlery, with no real impacts on
price or demand for the bad gold?

And being as there is no way to track gold, couldn't it just be laundered via
similar channels?

~~~
maxerickson
Yeah, it doesn't seem like they could move the price any, limiting any impact
on non certified mines.

I guess an analog to the Forest Stewardship Council could make people feel
better by creating a system to track the production of certified mines and
then allowing the first buyer to use their label.

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ISL
Perhaps someday Tiffany will consider synthetic gemstones, too.

The nuclei of both natural and synthetic stones were born in the same
supernovae, and the environmental and human costs are far smaller.

~~~
Animats
The diamond industry has origin tracking requirements for diamonds, in
something called the Kimberly Process. This is ostensibly to reduce sales of
"blood diamonds" from conflict zones, but there's a strong suspicion that it's
to keep synthetic diamonds from taking over the industry.

The diamond industry dug itself a hole with its PR. The best diamonds are
supposed to be "flawless", i.e. perfect crystals. The semiconductor substrate
industry is in the business of making perfect crystals. Semiconductor crystal
growing technology applied to diamond works quite well.[1] DeBeers keeps
struggling to build machines which can distinguish synthetic diamonds from
natural ones. They claim total success so far. Others disagree.[2] In any
case, it now takes about $50,000 in equipment to detect good synthetic
diamonds.

As for synthetic diamond abrasives, those are about $165/kilogram.[3] That
stuff is produced by the metric ton.

[1] [http://sciodiamond.com/](http://sciodiamond.com/) [2]
[http://www.diamonds.net/News/NewsItem.aspx?ArticleID=46436](http://www.diamonds.net/News/NewsItem.aspx?ArticleID=46436)
[3] [http://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-synthetic-diamond-
grit...](http://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-synthetic-diamond-grit.html)

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panglott
A large salmon fishery is inestimably more valuable than a gold mine, even if
gold is worth more money than salmon. Salmon has real value as food while gold
is merely cash. A sustainably managed fishery is an ongoing resource that
could supply food for a thousand years or more. It is foolish to destroy a
renewable long-term resource for a short-term cash grab.

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nether
On a sidenote, it looks like the HN policy of preserving original headlines is
completely out the window.

~~~
dang
One temporary deviation does not a policy change make. We can't control what
users do!

(Submitted title was "Tiffany Co. CEO on environmental impact of jewelry".
Since the original title isn't misleading or linkbait, the guideline would say
not to change it, so we changed it back.)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'm still very much for the idea of having both the original title and an
editorialised title which would largely avoid these "why was the title
altered" exchanges. Similarly when a source link is changed the original link
should be kept, some people like to read other's interpretation of the source,
other people like to read the original and digest it themselves; oftentimes
it's nice to read both.

~~~
tptacek
Who chooses the editorialized title? It can't be the submitter; submitters
aren't supposed to have a privileged position.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'd have thought the submitter would put one if they felt it was needed or a
mod could put one if the submitter hadn't. If the submitter puts a bad title
then I guess it might still need editing ... so still space for those that
want to argue about it! Win-win!!

~~~
tptacek
It's a principle of HN that submitters don't get extra privileges w/r/t
stories. Once they're posted, they're community property. So the feature you
propose can't be as simple as a second text input for the editorialized title:
that gives the submitter a kind of "super-comment" that other community
members don't get.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
But submissions themselves are a sort of super-comment, and you get to put a
meta comment if you want to ...

The only solution that I can see that avoids "priveleges" is to actually give
mod priveleges that allow a cadre of users to give a [sub-]title iff they
respect neutrality of the title.

Going this far seems a bit OTT though whilst there do seem to be less than
perfect options that are better than the current position.

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rbanffy
Eventually, we'll find out gold is not edible...

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fiatmoney
I'm glad we have organizations like the NY Times to tell us when Morality
requires we keep a people impoverished because they have the bad luck to live
on a landscape their readership finds aesthetically pleasing.

~~~
Maarten88
> ... Morality requires we keep a people impoverished because they have the
> bad luck to live on a landscape their readership finds aesthetically
> pleasing

You should really watch this documentary[1], about morality, richness, mining
corporations and the local people. Maybe you'll know better next time you make
such a generalizing remark.

[1] [http://www.whypoverty.net/video/stealing-
africa/](http://www.whypoverty.net/video/stealing-africa/)

~~~
fiatmoney
I can see from your link that you're the kind of person who cares deeply about
the plight of the unprivileged. Here I was concerned about the ability of
local populations to control their destiny even if that includes choices
contrary to the aesthetics of the NYT, but I see now that that just leads to
bad corporations making money.

