

Diamonds on Demand  - prakash
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/diamonds-on-demand.html?c=y&page=1

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mynameishere
Hopefully they will make the production as cheap as that of glass, thereby
destroying the despicable diamond trade forever.

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rms
Right now the jewelery grade diamonds are about 1/4 the price of evil
diamonds. They don't have much of an incentive to make the jewelry grade
diamonds cheaper. I suspect that even if diamond production gets to be almost
as cheap as glass the price of diamond jewelery will still be inflated.

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marvin
Not a chance. Given diamonds the same price of glass, you can bet that in
three months you could buy cheap (and tasteless) diamond jewelry in the same
stores you can buy cheap (and tasteless) glass jewelry. Diamonds look better
than glass, so why not use the real thing? There will always be markup for
good design, but cheap design is cheap. Most diamond pieces would be much
cheaper.

The instinct of demonstrating class with expensive jewelry will not go away,
however. Some other material will take the place of diamond - maybe some alloy
of rare metals. Or maybe new luxury brands will arise, with a 30,000% markup
on some quality, (well-)designed piece, maybe or maybe not containing
diamonds.

This is, of course, assuming that diamond reaches the price of glass, which I
strongly doubt that it will.

Last, in response to the OP, it is not the diamond trade which is the main
problem. It is people doing evil things to one another. Just as crushing one
monopoly will not end the practice of monopolies, crushing one evil empire
will not end the practice of evil empires. Just wait 20 years and some evil
trade will pop up in some other place. This focus on one particular phenomenon
is counterproductive, because it blinds us to the general principles behind
it.

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StrawberryFrog
The value of diamonds will eventually crash when the manufacturing process
becomes widespread enough.

The raw material, carbon, is cheaply available. The scarcity is an engineering
problem, which is being solved.

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DabAsteroid
_The scarcity is an engineering problem, which is being solved._

But scarcity is what makes mined-diamonds valuable.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=exclusivity+luxury>

How did you get the idea that diamond-scarcity is a problem?

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StrawberryFrog
Diamonds being scare and high-priced is not a problem for DeBeers, no. But it
is for most other people who would like cheaper diamond for jewellery or for
industrial/consumer uses. Wouldn't you like a iPhone with a screen of solid
clear diamond? It would be hard to scratch.

IMHO, DeBeers and the perception of diamonds as scarce and valuable can only
stand against engineering progress for a limited time.

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jmackinn
This article reminded me of a Wired article I read years ago. After a quick
look I found this: The New Diamond Age -
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html>

Some lines in the Smithsonian article are almost word for word right out of
the Wired one which seems slightly odd.

Either way, a very interesting topic.

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agentbleu
diamonds are common but the monopoly (De Beers) control the supply and nobble
the compertition.

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eru
I heard that, too. Do you recall any sources?

