
Diamonds Keep Getting Cheaper - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-13/the-problem-with-diamonds-is-they-keep-getting-cheaper
======
chadmeister
I bought a good quality moissanite stone for an engagement ring for 2% of the
price of an equivalent diamond and not a single person who has seen it has
ever thought it was anything but a diamond. My wife gets compliments on it all
the time. "What a beautiful diamond!" Every jeweler who has cleaned it has
thought it was a diamond. The only one who could distinguish it had to use a
thermal conductivity gun to do so. Buying diamonds for jewelry is honestly
really dumb at this point. I effectively saved $20,000 USD going this route
and no one is the wiser, execpt my wife of course :)

~~~
puranjay
My wife is a very pragmatic, smart and pragmatic person. But even then she
couldn't be convinced not to get a diamond. She was happy skipping the
honeymoon and reducing wedding expenses, but the diamond was a no go.

The marketing is too strong.

~~~
rossdavidh
It's not the marketing. It's the fact that it's what biologists call expensive
signaling. You are spending money, not on a trip that you both enjoy, but on a
ring that really only she enjoys. This is an expensive (therefore hard to
fake) signal that you care about how she feels.

Now, imagine that the diamond is cheaper. It is no longer an expensive signal.
Therefore, although the diamond is the same, it no longer serves the same
purpose. So, the cheaper diamonds get, the less demand there is from
prospective brides, even if only marginally. This fuels further declines,
although that is probably already happening due to better industrial diamonds.

This takes time, of course. But that also means it has a lot of momentum. As
the price decline continues, and the word of that spreads, it will accelerate.

~~~
puranjay
I don't know if it's so much about the money as it is something that she
just... wanted. I'm Indian so its custom to gift the bride a lot of gold. She
eschewed that happily in favor of a diamond ring that cost a fraction of the
gold she was offered otherwise.

But she loves her ring and has never spent a day without it. She will happily
wear faux silver earrings but the ring is non negotiable.

~~~
roenxi
Your wife might be special, but there are differences in the signalling of a
diamond and gold despite their superficial similarities.

Gold is famous for holding its resale value; so a gift of gold can in theory
be unwound to recover the money spent. It is a signal of wealth.

Diamonds cannot be resold, the money may as well have been burned. It is a
signal of wealth and commitment. There is also the added bonus that a diamond
is not going to be stolen.

~~~
bsanr2
>Diamonds cannot be resold.

I wasn't aware of this. What's the rationale?

~~~
takeda
Superstition that wearing someone's wedding ring is a bad luck. Probably was
similarly manufactured to keep higher demand for diamonds.

~~~
ncmncm
More that the people you would take it to have way too many already, and would
love to unload them on the next pigeon.

I have got some mileage out of characterizing mined diamonds as symbolizing
south-African slavery. At least, my wife didn't want one.

------
intsunny
There is a rather reddit-famous comment on why diamond prices are dropping:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/8pb8d5/i_grow_diamond...](https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/8pb8d5/i_grow_diamonds_i_make_custom_jewelry_with_these/e09x919/)

 _Almost every car, fridge, and radio from the 1950s has long been destroyed,
but virtually every diamond bought in the 1950s has the exact same utility
today. Those diamonds are about to flood the market, in significantly more
quantities than lab diamonds ever will._

 _There is a joke in the diamond industry that the biggest diamond mine in the
world is in Florida and Arizona, but the mine is the pawn shops, not the
Earth._

EDIT: formatting

~~~
JoeAltmaier
There's almost no resale market for diamonds, currently. A newspaper famously
tries to sell a diamond every few years and publishes the result. They've
never sold one.

So the insurance value for diamonds is their replacement cost, not their
'value'. Since if you can't sell it, it's got a hard time establishing a
number for value.

~~~
ijidak
So, how can a person like me take advantage of this?

This seems like a great arbitrage situation.

Where would one find these diamonds that no one wants to buy?

I hear these stories, but it seems like everyone that is selling a used
diamond is still asking top price for it.

~~~
colechristensen
Find your cheap diamonds with cash4gold style commercials on news networks and
daytime TV. Sell them to independent jewelers.

~~~
viggity
The independent jewelers get them dramatically cheaper than they sell them for
already.

~~~
windsurfer
This is sadly not true in North America. If a jewellery store wants to stay
GIA certified and get all the paperwork about being conflict-free, they need
to buy their diamonds at a much higher price.

------
Arete314159
I inherited some very nice jewelry, including diamonds, from my grandmother.
The "estimate" of the total worth was $20,000. However, when I tried to sell
it, it turned out that I would only be able to realize a fraction of that
estimate, from maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the "value." All jewelry is like that.

Jewelry prices, for reasons I don't entirely understand, are sort of like car
values...once you drive it off the lot, so to speak, the price plummets.

So when I got married I did not ask for a diamond, as I knew it was basically
worthless -- except to the jeweler.

~~~
faet
Estimate value is replacement value from a store. (Mostly for insurance).
People think it's "new" and "never worn". And stores have very high margins.

But, if you buy wholesale/used the buy/sell will be closer together. The issue
is people think "used" stones are tainted for some reason. Divorced? Bad luck!

It's like a gold band. It might cost $600 in the store. But, really the cost
is the weight of the gold (~$50). But, you can buy/sell it at $50 all day.

~~~
chipsa
Yeah, the cost of the gold may be $50. But the cost to make it more than just
the gold. It's also the skilled time of the guy making it, and the cost of
other materials used (wax, plaster, etc. for the mold), and amortization of
the tools.

I mean, if you just have a plain, unadorned ring, those costs are pretty low.
But if it's got interesting designs on it, or is multiple materials, that's
going to cause it to be more expensive.

Looking at Zales' website, they've got a 4mm 14K plain men's wedding band for
$225. That's probably around 5 grams in weight, with an actual gold content
probably around 3 grams. a gram of gold is ~$50 right now, so they're only
getting $75 at most in profit from that ring.

~~~
mlrtime
There are places around the world (India) Where you can pay for jewelry at the
weight in gold. There is little markup for labor/design. The pieces are just
as "beautiful" as anything you would get from Zales.

------
jacquesm
Diamond is a material. If materials become cheaper that's not a problem,
that's usually great, especially if those materials have desirable properties.
Can't wait for diamond to be as cheap as sugar (not that it will ever be), I
have zero use for it as decoration but plenty of use for it as material for
its properties: hardness, thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity,
transparency. Not many materials come close to mixing these properties in the
way that diamond does. There are plenty of materials that reflect light in
pretty ways.

~~~
tomatotomato37
Diamond material is already "cheap" if you just intend to use it on a drill or
lens and not a prestige object. You can get a 99.9% perfect pure synthetic
diamond plate bigger than your palm for like 500k, 90% of which being the new
tooling for a reactor big enough to form such an object. In contrast a high
quality 15 carat gem cut can easily go above $2M.

~~~
jacquesm
I think our definitions of cheap are a little ways apart.

~~~
tomatotomato37
That's the price for a diamond pushing the limits of industrial engineering.
You can also get a polycrystal plate of diamond with garbage optics for less
than $200 if you just need it for thermal purposes

[https://e6cvd.com/us/application/thermal/tm100-10x10-mm-0-50...](https://e6cvd.com/us/application/thermal/tm100-10x10-mm-0-50-mm-
thick.html)

~~~
solotronics
Wow this is cool! I am trying to figure out how to make a CPU heat sink out of
this.

------
daotoad
Ignoring everything else about the article, the graph of price over time is
total crap. If you want to show a change in the real price of something,

1\. show the full price range in the Y axis. I'll have none of this clipping
off the bottom half of the scale nonsene, please.

2\. use a logarithmic scale so a unit of length always equals a percentage
change.

3\. adjust the price data for inflation. I don't want to compare apples to
oranges, bananas, nectarines, and grapes! Give me a single value to consider.
Ad 2002 dollar is a different beast from a 2018 dollar.

Death to bad charts!

~~~
4ntonius8lock
But how else will they push their narratives?

Look at the language used:

> "lower prices and a glut of the type of stones ... have pushed the global
> diamond trade into crisis ... struggling to make profits"

They've literally managed to paint DeBeers diamonds as a victim! The level of
self serving propaganda from Bloomberg is amazing.

------
helen___keller
Millennial here. When I got married we skipped rings because ring culture is
bullshit.

(It was her idea before anyone asks. I suggested we get non-diamond or lab
grown, and was pleasantly surprised when I learned she _also_ thought rings
are dumb)

~~~
programmertote
Both me and my fiance (now wife) are millennials as well. I hate the ring
culture and all the wedding rituals (spending so much money to please others)
surrounding it. In fact, I don't even believe in marriage in traditional sense
(like going to courtroom to sign on a government issued certificate, which
only applies to legal realms)

My fiance, whom I believe is fairly reasonable and frugal in all aspects
considered, also learned (thanks to the movie, Blood Diamond) that diamonds
are not worth the price and unethical. But she still wanted me to spend some
amount on rings. So I had to buy decently priced wedding bands (cost about
$1700 each). Otherwise, I am sure my fiance wouldn't be too happy (thinking
that I married her for cheap). I really was surprised when I first heard my
fiance complaining about me not planning to buy rings for our wedding. The
marketing and brainwashing of women about rings and wedding culture really
work.

~~~
lazzlazzlazz
Diamonds being unethical is vastly overstated. "Blood Diamonds" aren't a thing
anymore, and end-to-end certification of the diamond supply chain is
commonplace.

~~~
throwawaymath
Do you have something to cite for this?

------
Merrill
De Beers fights lab-grown diamonds with technology as China’s synthetic gems
threaten viability of their market

>Companies producing such stones have sprung up all over China, churning out
an estimated 160,000 to 200,000 carats of gem-quality diamonds every month.
That’s enough to propel the country to the world’s top spot in terms of
synthetic production, industry insiders believe.

[https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2076225/de-b...](https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2076225/de-
beers-fights-fakes-technology-chinas-lab-grown-diamonds)

From March 2017. The production of carbon face-centered cubic crystals has
continued to grow.

~~~
robert_foss
Synthetic diamonds are not a Chinese invention but an American one. So if you
want to point fingers, point them at GE, Norton & Carborundum[1].

As for who manufactures them there's a list[2], and most of these companies
are not Chinese.

But maybe the more important point is; Why is it a problem that the De Beers
diamond mining company is having some competition. De Beers has a _very_
questionable business history[3], and personally I think the world would be
better without their exploitation.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond#GE_diamond_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond#GE_diamond_project)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_synthetic_diamond_manu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_synthetic_diamond_manufacturers)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers#Relocation_of_indigen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers#Relocation_of_indigenous_San_people_in_Botswana)

~~~
Merrill
The early American synthetic diamond producers, such as GE, mainly focused on
producing industrial diamonds for grinding and other applications not
requiring gem quality. They were never interested in taking on the DeBeers
monopoly with gemstones.

AFAIK, some of the earliest gem-quality synthetic diamonds were Russian. The
Chinese are important because they can evade DeBeers and its influence over
the diamond cutting and distribution establishment.

I'm all in favor of synthetic gemstones. Carbon is carbon, mined or not.

------
taneq
I'm not convinced that 'problem' is the right word for this. If nothing else
it's going to mean less market for blood diamonds.

~~~
kijin
True, the world will be a better place without De Beers and their ilk.

------
cluoma
I feel like this problem isn't specific to diamonds. The article mentions that
big brand names (Tiffany etc.) are relatively unaffected and that is a pattern
seen in many industries.

Skewed wealth distribution is creating demand for 'premium' products where
prices far outstrip the practical value of such items. Everything else becomes
commoditized as much as possible.

~~~
lotsofpulp
They are hurting. Tiffany’s value has been flat for 6 years, while the broader
market is up 50%+.

~~~
mucle6
That is the case for most stocks. 63% lose money. 35% make back the money the
first 63% lost, and then the last 3% drive the insane gains.

------
denimnerd42
I'm a millennial too and these threads always annoy me because I'm on the
"losing" side of the discourse. I thought rings were important and I got my
wife a very nice custom engagement ring from an artist on the internet with a
real excellent cut 1.5 carat G color ring which cost me less than 10k for the
stone. The design of the ring is completely custom and the wedding bands are
also custom each with stones of a different color. One more masculine and one
feminine.

To me, at my professional salary level, $15-18k for the set was worth it for
what they meant to us together. It's ok if the diamond has horrible resale or
in 10 years that stone will be worth 5k. We can always upgrade and move that
stone to earrings or whatever.. Although any near term purchases of jewelry
will definitely be "mossy" as they are called by some in the trade.

~~~
jobigoud
In 2005 I bought a car for around $5K and it's still working well. I am still
having trouble understanding the rationale of spending 10K on a small piece of
body decoration that only a small number of people will even notice. I
understand this has to be very culture-specific.

~~~
4ntonius8lock
I'm with you. I hate debt and don't mess with it. My cars were all purchased
in cash and I live well within my means. But I like to keep in mind not
everyone is in my position in life.

IF the couple has paid their student debt, and IF they own their cars and
house outright, and IF they have 50 to 100x the price of the purchase in the
bank as savings, I say enjoy your money. As long as you aren't putting
yourself in a position to become a slave to your debts over silly shinny
objects, great for you.

Otherwise, I don't think such extravagant spending outside of this scenario
would not pass muster of any rational, analytic reasoning, say, a la 'Judge
Judy' or 'Suze Orman' (as she appears on TV when not talking about issues
where she has a conflict of interest, just her regular advice)

------
Spinosaurus
Strange that the article does not mention lab grown diamonds. I would have
assumed that the increases in production of lab grown diamonds combined with
increasing consumer acceptance of lab grown diamonds would be a large
contributor to price declines.

Is there reason to believe this is _not_ the case?

As an aside, has anyone ever purchased a lab grown diamond? What was your
experience? Where did you purchase it?

~~~
0xcafecafe
Not diamond but bought a 3 karat moissanite pendant necklace for my wife a few
years back. Being synthetic it had a perfect crystal structure leading to a
glow/reflectiveness hard to get in diamond without breaking the bank. It still
looks good and wife loves to wear it.

Bought it at a local helzberg store.

~~~
aidenn0
SiC (moissanite) is also birefringent which makes it look a lot more sparkly
(each incident ray of non-polarized light is split in 2, so if illuminated by
a single bright light source you get twice as many sparkles).

------
theonemind
Diamond doesn't even qualify as a rare substance on earth. Honestly, I don't
know how the diamond racket has kept it together this long in the information
age, but their racket can't collapse soon enough.

------
MarcScott
Diamonds Suck - [http://diamondssuck.com/](http://diamondssuck.com/)

HN Discussion -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944464)

------
BlameKaneda
If I'm to have an engagement ring for (presumably) years and years, I'd much
rather have something that I'd want to wear and fits my own personal
interests/taste.

I'd take a stone that's a beautiful color over a diamond any day.

------
billpg
DeBeers are losing money?

"Hello? Is that the Tiny Musical Instrument Company? I'd like to make a bulk
purchase of violins."

~~~
papln
Can you get them small enough to set in a ring? I imagine they'd be quite
expensive for craftship of such fine detail.

------
thrower123
There's nothing more depressing than seeing how little diamonds are worth
second-hand when you are trying to get rid of a reminder of a failed
relationship...

~~~
RandomBacon
First off, I'm sorry thrower123, hopefully this might help anyone else from
avoiding the same situation...

LPT (maybe) anyone: If you married someone who insists on a _new_ diamond ring
(first of all, I'm sorry), just buy secondhand, buy a jeweler's box off eBay,
and if she's going to want to see the receipt, use all the money you saved to
buy a thermal printer (though I wonder if there's a service that will print
thermal paper and mail it to you...)

You can say you sold your gold/guns/whatever, hide it somewhere, and if you
get divorced (you did marry someone who wanted this absurdity after all),
those assets are now out of the picture because you sold them.

/joke, please don't break the law

~~~
gpm
Maybe just don't get married if that's how you are planning to start your
marriage.

~~~
balfirevic
It's a perfectly proportional response to someone insisting on a new diamond
ring. But yes, not marrying them would be even better.

------
jasode
I actually read the famous _" Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?"_[0] by
The Atlantic over 30 years ago and since then, there have been multiple
predictions of diamond prices collapsing. (Various reasons given such as
Russia, China diamonds flooding market, synthetic diamonds, used diamonds,
etc).

And yet based on some quick googling, diamond prices exceed US inflation when
comparing year 2000 to 2016. The reported diamond price of $30925 exceeds
inflation calculation of $21045.[1][2]

[ Screenshot in case Statistica puts graph behind paywall:
[https://imgur.com/a/pOgsyy5](https://imgur.com/a/pOgsyy5) ]

There seems to be a fundamental flaw of in the mental model of everyone
predicting that diamond prices will crash. It would be interesting to hear a
theory on why it never happened. I don't think the answer is as simple as
"DeBeers marketing and supply restrictions" because there are a many diamond
supply chains they don't control.

[0] past discussions:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sell+a+diamond](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sell+a+diamond)

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/279053/worldwide-
sales-o...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/279053/worldwide-sales-of-
polished-diamonds/)

[2]
[https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

~~~
beefield
> There seems to be a fundamental flaw of in the mental model of everyone
> predicting that diamond prices will crash. It would be interesting to hear a
> theory on why it never happened.

I would guess the flaw is the same as in the theory that bitcoin will crash to
zero.

If you ask me to formulate the flaw based on my way too cynical worldview, it
would be something like "massively underestimating the amount of people who
have zero clue about what they actually are buying"

------
ganitarashid
Artificial diamonds are more flawless than natural diamonds. And natural
diamonds are not rare. And they’re not forever because they burn easily.

These are all things you’re not supposed to know.

------
gumby
The function of the diamond engagement ring no longer exists: it was
essentially a down payment: if the engagement were broken off, the former
fiancée could sell the diamond instead of bringing a breach of promise suit.
Those suits have faded away; all that remains is the vestigial diamond.

Weddings are full of such rituals; European weddings typically had seed cakes
(fertility, get it?) dating at least from Roman times. Victoria had a big
white cake and a big white dress and that set the fashion not just for Europe
and North America but many parts of the world too.

My mother has a diamond ring -- my parents _were_ married in the era of breach
of promise suits -- but more interestingly I have seen the gold she was
wearing in her wedding (in a wedding sari not white dress): it is so pure
(soft) it could only be worn that one time and was given as wedding gifts also
as a hedge against financial misfortune.

I remember as a kid jewelry was bought and sold entirely by weight -- the
workmanship was free! (Obviously nobody in my family was buying gems or I
would have learned how they interacted with this system.) I have no idea if
this is still the case as I am not a good boyfriend/husband in this regard.

------
robert_foss
The problem for the diamond mining industry is that they're getting cheaper.

------
ksec
I am reading these comment about their Wife being either smart, socially
conscious or whatever it is, but still being sold into buying Diamonds due to
_Marketing_ , High Price Signal or _Culture_.

This completely misses the point, Diamond is Beautiful. We human, especially
female likes beautiful things. It is no coincidence that humans around the
globe, hundreds of different cultures over different continents all settles on
similar gems stones. For whatever physiological reason we humans like Shiny
Object.

And moissanite stone, as far as I have seen are no diamonds, may be to those
who are less demanding, the colour and shines are slightly different. And to
those who demands quality, once you have seen a beautiful diamond, you can not
unseen it. There is a reason why Tiffany and Cartier still command a premium.

------
gatherhunterer
Start making diamond knives, buttons, zippers, put diamonds on Air Jordans,
sell an iPhone with a diamond Apple logo so people can see it while you
obnoxiously take selfies and give it a “posted from Apple DiPhone” tag for
social media, pay male celebrities to be seen with diamond earrings and nose
rings, sell diamond-studded Bibles signed by Kanye West, and open a line of
diamond essential oils (which will be easy because they have no smell so just
sell expensive mineral oil). This is easy. People spend money on themselves so
make it all about the buyer being the recipient rather than the buyer using it
as a gift and use all of the shallow marketing tricks that have been proven to
be effective.

~~~
wufufufu
who hurt you?

------
lightedman
Diamonds are generally boring unless you're into fluorescent minerals. Then,
depending upon their inclusions, diamonds can take on an insane array of
colors under a UV light. That white diamond suddenly turning cherry red can be
quite the pleaser. But most people don't know that about a diamond, and insist
on flawless stones instead, which tend to have practically no character.

------
wavefunction
Is that a problem or simply a fact? It seems like cheaper diamonds improve my
life much more than more expensive diamonds would.

------
Gatsky
Surprised by the mention of the morality of ‘Blood Diamonds’... this is
classic western privilege, where the moral significance of an issue is
proportional to the light of our attention. Do we really presume that the life
of a wretched child in the Congo is going to improve because we buy an emerald
instead?

~~~
ssully
Not that it makes blood diamonds ok, but I would be curious to know how many
people sneering at people buying real diamonds made their comment using
hardware produced in a sweatshop, that was produced using minerals acquired
using practices that are just as bad as those to acquire diamonds?

Obviously the diamond trade is terrible and is built on the backs of
suffering, but a lot of the people I know IRL who literally used the movie
blood diamond (or material talking about the benefits of artificial diamonds)
to convince their fiance to go for an artificial diamond. But when trying to
discuss the ethics of electronic production they literally just do not give a
shit. Maybe it's just a classic case of people can only care about so many
things, and these people just made the diamond trade their thing to care
about, but to me, it came off like they only acted like they gave a shit about
the diamond trade to save a few thousand on a ring without pissing off their
fiance.

~~~
Gatsky
Yeah, it is somewhat convenient in a way.

------
lolc
Did I really just read an article on pricing diamonds in 2019 that neglected
to mention how diamonds are manufactured these days? It's impossible the
writer doesn't know. So what is going on?

~~~
saagarjha
He e are they manufactured?

~~~
majewsky
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_diamond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_diamond)

~~~
MS90
I don't think that's what they were talking about. I think they were referring
to the fact that diamonds can be created synthetically in a lab now.

They said "manufactured" not "mined"

------
aussiegreenie
Diamonds are worthless. This has been true for a long time especially after
the huge number of small Russian diamond entered the market in the 1980s.

------
bitL
Can we use diamonds to replace silicon in semiconductors? Wouldn't it be a
better material for wafers in order to achieve >10GHz frequencies?

------
jgalt212
It's a commonly known fact the bigger the rock, the more unattainable the
woman.

------
gdsdfe
I wish people stop posting articles behind pay walls

------
mirimir
There's no mention of synthetic diamonds. Odd.

------
acollins1331
The growth in demand isn't keeping up with population growth because young
people are not getting married, don't have enough money, read on the internet
who mines the diamonds. Screw diamonds and the idiots who are upset they are
getting cheaper.

~~~
Someone1234
And in some cases are willing to spend more on lab grown.

People will call it "virtue signaling" or whatever, but ultimately a lot of
diamond mines around the world are run on blood (war, slavery, abuse,
dangerous work conditions, etc) and they want no part of that, and are happy
to let others know they made that choices.

So the diamond industry is getting squeezed from three sides. Customers too
poor, inexpensive lab grown out of China, and a customer base who would rather
not be associated with this: [https://time.com/blood-
diamonds/](https://time.com/blood-diamonds/)

------
m23khan
It's OK - if your partner really wants one and somehow you can afford, go for
it. If not, than don't. No point of complaining or badmouthing (or promoting)
diamonds.

EDIT: wow, quiet a few downvotes (was expecting). Anyways, allow me to clarify
--

I could go ahead and demonize chocolate (cocoa) or coffee (coffee farming is
no field of dreams for workers) but more realistic approach is to see:

(1) The companies such as DeBeers have stopped trading (or at least try their
best) blood diamonds

(2) Governments have banned blood diamonds -- at least countries like Canada
has.

(3) Diamonds may be symbol of decadence and Masonite maybe the logical answer
but you can argue same thing about wanting to drive an expensive sports car
where a humble cheap sedan would do the job.

(4) People are complex - there are ladies who don't like or are against
diamonds or they realize it is not worth the cost, etc. Then there are ladies
who _want_ diamond, PERIOD. Who am I to rule against them knowing there are
people who _want_ horseback riding or equally wasteful activity such as
wearing designer shoes or buying the latest iPhone.

Point is, not everything is so black and white, right and wrong. There needs
to be a fine balance and we should not follow a herd mentality in either
extreme (criticizing or encouraging).

~~~
mrfredward
> Diamonds may be symbol of decadence and Masonite maybe the logical answer
> but you can argue same thing about wanting to drive an expensive sports car
> where a humble cheap sedan would do the job.

This comparison would be accurate if a Toyota and a Ferrari were virtually
identical, with the easiest way to tell them apart being that the Toyota was
perfect and the Ferrari had imperfections in the interior because the leather
was hand stitched. And if the hand stitching was historically done by slaves.

