Slashdot Mirror
Diamonds - Are They Really Worth the Cost?
hardDiamond asks: "I'm going to get engaged. I know my 4 C's. I know I'm going to get screwed by the jeweller, but that's okay: after all, a diamond engagement ring is a time-honoured tradition... NOT. Having checked out the goods, looked for the flaws, I found the biggest one of all. Diamond engagement rings are the creation of a well orchestrated advertising campaign for most of the last century - according to this article.
Would you buy one for the love of your life? I know my girlfriend would love a diamond, but ethically I have my doubts. Diseased-miners, child slave labour, cartel inflated prices... and as if that wasn't enough, diamonds have no resale value. Naddah. Zilch. They'll sell you the shit, but damn it, they're not taking it back at any price. So what have my fellow slashdotters done with regards to engagement rings? What's a good substitute for diamonds? My girlfriend understands my thoughts regarding diamonds, but deep down, I'm sure she would like a diamond. Even a small one." I've never even thought about questioning such a time honored tradition, but now I'm curious. Have any of you looked at the issues surrounding diamonds and found them wanting? What alternatives have you found and were they acceptable?
After researching this a bit, one of the key facts to surface is that 2-4.5% of diamond sales will go to finance terrorism or forms of violence. Such diamonds, for want of a better term, have been named "conflict diamonds". For those of you interested in following up on this subject, here are a few more links:
Fatal TransactionsFor those of you who have a subscription to Science News, the cover story, this month, deals with this issue as well.
Conflict Diamonds: Sanctions and War
The Campaign to Eliminate Conflict Diamonds
The Kimberly Process, which will attempt to track diamonds to their origin. This is to begin in November.
Opals are always a nice stone and do have a decent resale value. Of course they're rather hard to find in the US.
They're really expensive, but are guaranteed not to have the ethical overhead of others. Plus, they have a cool little polar bear laser-etched into the side (very tiny, you have to use a loupe to see it).
They're called Polar Bear Diamonds.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
About manufactured diamonds and their history.
currently Gemesis is America's primary manufacturer. They are building a $25m factory for making better/ different colored diamonds. Currently they can make yellow ones, though the show showed clear, and fanciful colored ones (in testing it seems).
They are "real" diamonds, pretty much seeded carbon crystal. Any gemologist can likely tell you they are real diamond, albeit manufactured. AFAIK the cost is a little higher, if not compriable for now.
A good account of the state of the art two years ago can be found in the transcript of a NOVA show on diamond synthesis: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2703diamo nd.html
http://canadian-diamonds.theshoppe.com/canadian_di amond_mining.htm
to quote: Canadian diamonds treasured by the worlds diamond experts. Sought after for their incredible beauty and brilliance. Mined in accordance to the highest ethical standards.
I believe everything I read on the Internet, of course, but hey, worth a look - especially if you want to REALLY surprise her with the kneeling and the asking and the whatnot.
I am a leaf on the wind
Better than diamonds or opals are emeralds.
Emeralds are actually more rare than diamonds, and so are worth more.
"All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening."
- Alexandar Woolcot
Premarital sex was not invented in the 1960s, and has in fact been around ever since just before the first marriage. Of course, back in the good old days, a good girl would never have sex before wedlock. However, some were willing to bend the rules once they were engaged. So, men quickly discovered that you could ask a woman to marry you, have sex with her, and then break off the engagement.
Up until 1935, this was considered an actionable tort in 47 of the 48 states. A woman who was deceived in this way could sue for the value of her lost virginity and subsequent difficulty in acquiring a husband. State legislatures passed laws against these suits in the 1930s and 1940s.
So, after this ability was removed, women needed a new way to ensure that a man proposing marriage really meant it. It became social custom that a man asking for marriage would post a performance bond equivalent to about twice his monthly salary. This bond would be forfeitable upon his breaking off of the engagement, but returnable if she broke off the engagement. This 'bond' was implemented as a diamond ring, because it was an easy way to, er, 'crystalize' two months of his salary in an easy-to-handle package.
In essence, the engagement ring is a private reimplementation of a canceled government policy.
There are other, less oppressive, countries to obtain diamonds from.
Where?
Canada.
What? Canada?
There are only Igloos and Eskimos (Inuit) up there, right?
Not so, there are also Polar Bears.
http://www.siriusdiamonds.com/home.htm
If you're Canadian, buy Canadian.
If you're American, buy North American.
Just a suggestion.
it's a myth. unfortuantely i am on my way out the door and don't have the time to find the proof, but it's true. i think it's something like 12 or 14 percent of our oil comes from that region. granted that's still a lot of oil, but nothing like the 90% that joe 6-pack american seems to think.
out of those countries we get oil from i do not know how many may be considered shady today. the enemy seems to change every few years. whatever your political views are, the only real constant pal the United States seems to have over there is Isreal and they are lacking the oil reserves that would keep the USA stocked happy. it seems like everyone else manages to upset us one time or another (or they were also too friendly with the USSR and therefore no longer our friend) argh.
ride a bike, it solves more problems than you would ever know.
I may blow some /. karma by saying this, but that Atlantic article is one of the best pieces I've seen linked from /. in quite a while. It has nothing to do with tech or software and can't really be called news for nerds, but it's an eye-opener about how businesses manipulate public perception out there in the real world. If you skipped the article and went straight to the comments like I did, it's worth going back to read the article.
Works well for my parents. And my girlfriend's parents. And the parents of my best friends.
,social and financial terms, when you'll be able to screen the child and transplant foreign, "better" genetic material to the offsprings ?
...
What worked well for them may very probably NOT work well for us:
you're ignoring a major factor here: the pill.
I believe the pill is the major reason for the sexual revolutions and backlashes of the second half of last century. Seperating procreation from sex was a major destabilizer for monogamy (that, and the the women joining the work-force, thus giving them options they didn't have before).
My point is: the human race is still in the after-effects of the seperation of sex from procreation, and in this respect, we ARE different from our parents.
Our descendants may go even further down this road: even today you see lesbian couples using genetic material from sperm-banks, what will the notion of marriage mean, in genetic
I guess they'll live in ingteresting times
Working for necessity's mother.
Uh, that's not really the case these days. Sure diamonds are still a bit inflated due to their cultural status (which was and is largely manufactured by coordinated advertising and marketing efforts), but the article being referenced here was written in 1982. That's twenty years ago. In 1980, the price of a 1 carat diamond was over $60,000 (in 1980 dollars)! By 82, that rock had already shed 2/3 of its value. These days, a 1 carat diamond fetches around $5-6000 retail (if it's a really high-quality gem), but realistically you can get a 1-carat I/I1 clarity solitare ring on Ebay for well under $1000. Beautiful SI clarity in the .5 carat range, with additional smaller rocks as side-mounts are in that affordable price-range as well. If you adjust for inflation, the market depreciation for these rocks is truly staggering (something like a 97-98% loss).
The diamond market crash is old news. It's done. The fact is, even given the strong output of mining, there is still a lot of labor involved in producing diamond jewelry. It's estimated that you have to move 250 tons of diamond-bearing earth to retrieve 1 carat of polished, gem-quality rock. Then the stone has to be polished, cut, polished, examined, appraised, stored, marketed, shipped, stored again, appraised again, marketed again and sold at retail. That results in quite a bit of markup, but there is a wide enough demand for diamond jewelry to fuel this business and allow these companies to make a profit, and while it's quite a tidy sum, it's nothing like the rediculous markups they used to achieve.
Furthermore, contrary to your initial argument, the resale value does drop significantly when you walk out of the store with it. It always has. You've never been able to recapture the retail value of diamond jewelry by reselling it. Most jewelery retailers won't even talk to you about buying back used diamonds, leaving you to choose between exchanges which will offer slightly less than wholesale to you, pawn shops which won't even offer that, or newer secondary markets, like ebay, where you can probably capture something slightly higher than wholesale for it.