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Scientists at De Beers Fight the Growing Threat of Man-Made Diamonds (wsj.com)
"In the past few years, lab-grown diamonds have become indistinguishable from natural diamonds to the naked eye..." reports the Wall Street Journal. This creates a problem for diamond-mining company De Beers. HughPickens.com writes:
While synthetics make up just a fraction of the market, they have growing appeal to younger buyers -- a headache for mine owners, who are under pressure to cut supply and lower prices, because traders, cutters and polishers are struggling to profit amid a credit squeeze and languishing jewelry sales... "Martin Roscheisen, chief executive of Diamond Foundry Inc., a San Francisco synthetic-diamond producer with a capacity of 24,000 carats, says he believes nearly all diamonds consumers purchase will be man-made in a few decades," reports the Journal. "To counter the threat, last year De Beers helped launch a trade association with other producers to market the attraction of natural diamonds. It also started marketing a new, cheap detector called PhosView, that uses ultraviolet light to detect lab-grown stones that quickly screens tiny synthetic diamonds.
It always seemed like a waste of money to me. After all, it's literally raining diamonds on Saturn.
It always seemed like a waste of money to me. After all, it's literally raining diamonds on Saturn.
And have what are essentially slaves to dig up new ones.
:T:R:A:N:S:
Hopefully before then, the main threat will become the consumer realizing they're a massive waste of money.
That is all I have to say about this.
It's so much more romantic to give diamonds that were mined by people on subsistence level wages in terrible conditions and then used to make massive profits by a parasitic organization that is dedicated to preserving a monopoly through artificial scarcity. What's "real" when the end result is the same, or perhaps even purer when man-made?
Diamonds are not as rare as some other gemstones. It's only the massive market manipulation that gives them their value.
The end of DeBeers cannot come soon enough.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
....yeah, fuck DeBeers in their cartel ass
-SaNo
Synthetic diamonds could be an important semiconductor. I wish the DeBeers monopoly would end already via cheap synthetic diamonds instead of remaining and blocking important research. Nobody is going to carry around a detector. Man made diamonds are better: at least you know they're not used to fun wars in Africa or dug up by what are essentially slaves.
Diamonds aren't particularly rare, the only thing that makes them valuable is that DeBeers has been holding a very tight near-monopoly, so there's no free market.
Their operation is a reality version of the cartoon view of capitalism promoted by leftists for years. Every bad thing you can think of, they do, from the monopoly, exploitation of workers, callous disregard for humanity, and on and on. Capitalism and western society left this sort of bullcrap behind 100 years ago, but not these bastards. Anything that breaks their hold will be welcome from all sides of the spectrum,
Diamond Foundry Inc., a San Francisco synthetic-diamond producer with a capacity of 24,000 carats
A day? An hour? Per year? Their office safe can't hold more than that? How does this provide any sort of perspective?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"...a headache for mine owners, who are under pressure to cut supply and lower prices, because traders, cutters and polishers are struggling to profit...
When the retail end of this entire market reflects rather obscene profit margins, the real problem is rather glaring.
Sorry, but with the collusive pricing actions of the entire industry on the retail end of things, they are likely getting what they deserve. Pure unadulterated greed created these alternate products, and for valid reasons.
And "the attraction" would be the blood of Africans that is spilled in obtaining them? The horrible working conditions that they are mined under? The environmental destruction that is wreaked by digging them up? Please help me out here, there are so many "attractions" to choose from.
Nice shilling, but very much not true.
They have some competition, yes.
You if you read, just above, ' a headache for mine owners, who are under pressure to cut supply and lower prices'
cutting supply is almost exactly how the prices have been kept at the stupid level they are these days.
Diamonds are among the MOST common of the gemstones, and about the only reason for their pricing was cunning marketing and supply control..
And have what are essentially slaves to dig up new ones.
Perhaps synthetic diamonds should be marketed as "cruelty-free diamonds". As far as synthetic vs. natural -- if it's made up of carbon atoms arranged in a face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice (to paraphrase Wikipedia), it's a fucking diamond. All the work of digging up "natural" stones, etc ... doesn't make them better, just more expensive. Of course, I'm sure The Diamond Industry will disagree (and have me killed). :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Pretty much.
If they hire some good marketers they can market them as 100% guaranteed cruelty free diamonds with little to no environmental impact (or at least less than digging them out of the ground), and on top of that 100% pure with no imperfections.
My thoughts exactly. Will the marketers of synthetic diamonds manage to establish them as "diamonds guaranteed to be free of imperfections and cruelty" or will the marketers of mined diamonds manage to establish synthetic diamonds as "not authentic"? BTW, I think the latter group will win. Nobody buys diamonds for the shiny effect (that's what cubic zirconia is for), they buy them to demonstrate they are willing to spend on something expensive but useless. Synthetic diamonds will be just as useless as real ones but -in the future- will fail at the "expensive" bit
believes nearly all diamonds consumers purchase will be man-made in a few decades
What, just because they're cheaper and of higher quality, and don't involve unethical and environmentally unfriendly mining operations, and as a bonus reduce the money earned by a nasty cartel?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The difference between synthetic vs natural diamonds is exactly the same as between ice you get from putting water into your freezer vs that hauled from far-away mountains. The latter is expensive and dirty. If you want, you can put dirt into your synthetic diamonds too!
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
and Trump has better odds being our next 3 presidents than I do getting married but I'll say this: No way in hell would I buy a woman a diamond engagement ring. Even without the ethical quandaries (blood diamonds anyone?) I'd still feel like a chump. I remember growing up thinking a diamond engagement ring was a 1000 year old tradition and finding out it was all made up in the 20s by marketing execs to sell diamonds.
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DeBeer's behavior parallels other established interests we have read about recently such as taxi "cartels" trying to suppress upstarts Uber & Lyft, or hotel "cartels" trying to suppress VRBO & Airbnb. Jump ahead 50 years. I would wager that taxis, hotels, and natural diamonds will have lost their stranglehold to the likes of Uber, Airbnb, and synthetic diamonds. Adapt or die.
Yeah, we should be really concerned for the interests of diamond companies.
' a headache for diamond mine owners, who are under pressure
If they were under enough pressure, they could turn coal into diamonds.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
They aren't mutually exclusive. "Cruelty-free" natural diamonds already exist from mines in places like Canada and Australia with decent environmental, safety, and labour laws. That's why sometimes they brand them differently.
It's not even the digging up of natural stones that makes them expensive. De Beers grabs just about every source of natural diamonds that they can and stores them away. By limiting the supply, they can drive prices up. If all of the diamonds in De Beers storehouses were to go on the market, the price of diamonds would drop.
De Beers can't buy up the supply of synthetic diamonds, though. Any lab anywhere can get the equipment and start churning out synthetic diamonds. And whereas natural stones might be of varying quality, synthetics can be perfect every time.
De Beers is a monopolistic company that is suddenly finding itself facing competition. As such, they are reacting as monopolistic companies usually do - not by competing with a better product but by trying to shut down or shout down their new competition.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
And have what are essentially slaves to dig up new ones.
Perhaps synthetic diamonds should be marketed as "cruelty-free diamonds". As far as synthetic vs. natural -- if it's made up of carbon atoms arranged in a face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice (to paraphrase Wikipedia), it's a fucking diamond. All the work of digging up "natural" stones, etc ... doesn't make them better, just more expensive. Of course, I'm sure The Diamond Industry will disagree (and have me killed). :-)
The De Beers cartel has certainly put a lot of effort into controlling the diamond market so you may want to keep a low profile.
The Atlantic magazine's excellent article from 1982 enlightened my younger self as to the utter scam that is the diamond industry
http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
A house fire produces temperatures up to about 550C. The surface of a diamond will oxidize, necesitating polishing, between 700C and 1700C. With normal oxygen levels it's about 700C, in an oxygen-depleted environment such as a fire diamonds can be unharmed up to 1700C.
All gem grade materials are rare, composing just a tiny fraction of the earth. Diamonds are no exception to this, but among gems, diamonds are actually the most common.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I love that a good synthetic diamond simply can't be distinguished from the real thing without the aid of very advanced technology. Specifically, that even a trained diamond cutter with decades of experience working with diamonds can't tell without the assistance of advanced technology.
Then they try to tell the public that synthetic is somehow bad.
I am not a fan of margarine but this sounds like when the butter lobby managed to do things like prevent margarine from being coloured yellow after an unsuccessful attempt to get it banned.
I am willing to bet that what is coming is one of two things, or both. First is that you must label a synthetic diamond as synthetic. Or they will try to force people to label synthetic diamonds as something else entirely(as if they weren't chemically a diamond).
The next is a campaign of "fake means he doesn't love you"
Then it will turn out that they will go after any jewelers who cut, sell, design, or anything that anything to do with synthetics. Basically the rule will be, if you sale synthetics then you don't get to sell the real thing.
But when all this is over just look at what happened to the natural pearl industry after cultured pearls took over. There was a brief orgy of resistance, and then it all fell apart.
I bought a cruelty-free diamond. Gave it to my now ex-wife and turns out it was full of cruelty.
and De beers have even provide the tools to guarantee that you aren't getting ground mined "cruel" diamonds. The price of diamonds is all about the marketing so turn it around on the price fixing miners.
Reminds me of that bitter joke Rod Stewart said a few years ago. "Instead of getting married again, I'll find I woman I don't like and by her a house."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
and everything to do with being manipulated. I'd like to think any woman I marry would be smart/cynical enough to recognize that insanity that is a 'natural' diamond. Also I'd like her to consider the conditions it was mined in (slave labor, wars, torture, etc).
Why not put the money into a nicer house if it's just a statement of how much I'm willing to spend. Something that you live with daily.
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It should be possible to introduce impurities into a lab grown diamond to create patterns based on DNA, or a fingerprint, or hell, an RSA public key. Then they'd be unique in a more meaningful way than natural imperfections.
De Beers and jewelers try to convince us that diamonds are an investment and that they hold their value. Completely and utterly false. I remember this great article from years ago:
http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...
(turn off javascript to view the article so the anti-ad blocker won't pop up... it's just not safe to disable ad blocking).
The entire demand for diamonds was created by De Beers. It's a marketing scam.
The demand is there. I looked at diamond prices last month, and "cultured" diamonds cost more than natural diamonds, for similar C4 (clarity, cut, carat, color). I was planning to buy a cultured diamond, specifically because of the environmental and human rights aspects, but I was put off by the prices. So I bought my wife a new Macbook Pro instead. Working conditions in Chinese factories are certainly better than in African mines.
Diamonds are among the MOST common of the gemstones, and about the only reason for their pricing was cunning marketing and supply control..
Part of the cost is also that it takes a lot of training, experience and tools to cut diamonds, and especially at the right angles to catch the light, and to not highlight inherent flaws. Diamonds are exceptionally hard, and with the tools needed to cut them, fairly brittle. The sheer amount of work and risk of ruining the stone adds significantly to the cost. Even for synthetic diamonds.
That said, diamonds make the best heat sinks. That's why I want the synthetic diamond industry to succeed.
I'd like to see natural diamonds outlawed. No, I take that back. That'd just create another black market. They should just be labelled with a warning like cigarettes. If most people knew the history of the DeBeers cartel they'd never buy anything but synthetic.
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Diamond cutting has existed for (at least) hundreds of years. Diamonds have always been plentiful but the skill to cut them was not. It was one of the trades that allowed the Jewish people to survive through centuries of persecution. It was really DeBeers that took an ancient craft and turned it into something horrible.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
That would be "Spence Diamonds", with their horrendous, obnoxious, pervasive, loud and aggravating commercials. Yes they're calling synthetic diamonds "artisan created diamonds", and no, they're not marketing them as being worth more. They're marketing them as being a cheaper, yet indistinguishable alternative to traditionally-mined diamonds, for exactly the same reasons as the summary states: Jewelry sales are declining as younger generations cannot afford expensive jewelry, or view it as a frivolous expense.
So what's the solution? Marketing, of course! The louder, more obnoxious, pervasive and aggravating the better. Thank their horrible ads for these two posts.
Unlike porn, which yada yada rimshot hey-ooh!
I just spent 15 minutes browsing "Diamond Foundry", one of the places that makes synthetics. They aren't cheap - but they do seem to be cheaper than natural diamonds, by 40% or so. Anyways, none of their synthetics are flawless. Cut, clarity, or inclusions - none are perfect in all 3. There are some that are supposed to have no flaws you can see without being a gemologist, for around 10k for a big one, but even a lab can't guarantee perfection it seems. Tiny differences in vibration, in the feed nozzles, flaws and contaminants in the production chamber - apparently the process is not yet perfected.
With that said, it might be in 20 more years. There is talk of some day being able to make synthetic diamonds so large and flawless and in such vast quantities that they can be used as microchip wafers. A side effect of putting billions into it for the mass production of microchip wafers would probably be diamonds that are far superior to natural diamonds for less than a tenth of the cost.
The important point is whether you got laid. I mean, if you're going to engage in the undeclared prostitution that is many marriages ...
It is only "undeclared" by default. I have a prenup with a specific QoS guarantee. For each day that she breaches her contractual responsibility, I can legally keep 3% of my monthly income for my personal use.
A marriage without a prenup is inherently unfair. Your wife can compel you to financially support her, while you get nothing in return. So instead of letting your state legislators decide how your marriage will work, you and your spouse should decide that for yourselves.
I'm sorry but name for me just one majority-black nation (or hell, even a city) that is a pleasant, safe, prosperous place to live. Hell, do you know the history of Haiti? It had a prosperous mostly agrarian/plantation economy with relatively safe cities and farms, public sanitation, well established law. This is when the French were in control. Then the blacks intercepted a shipment of muskets and revolted. They quickly took control of a "made" nation! It went to shit soon after and has never recovered.
You come so close but can't see the forest for the trees.
That is, you basically outline the problem with colonialism and the extraction of resources from colonial lands and the socioeconomics of decolonization and the best you can come up with is that "Blacks just can't organize peacefully at those scales"?.
The effect of European colonization of black-majority lands and the socioeconomic problems that result from post-colonial conditions where foreign individuals and powers own the resources of those decolonized lands has been discussed by economists, scientists, politicians, journalists, and writers for the last 50 years. Here's a few Google results regarding the "effects of decolonization in Africa".
Maybe something other than the facts of political history prevents you from understanding why formerly colonized peoples who no longer own the resources of their homelands would struggle economically and sociopolitically.
blog
In the past few years, lab-grown diamonds have become indistinguishable from natural diamonds to the naked eye...
This looks suspiciously like a story I read in Wired magazine 13 years ago. Lab grown diamonds have been indistinguishable from natural diamonds for a long time now. The price of diamond should be a lot lower than it is, even without the competition from artificial diamonds, but De Beers has been allowed to abuse their monopoly position to stockpile the output of their mines and control the flow into the market to maintain artificial scarcity, and threaten not to supply jewellers who work with artificial diamonds.
In the Middle Ages, diamonds were not thought of as gemstones, because they didn't have any color, and because the facette cut was not in use yet. Gemstones were rounded before being put into jewelry, and a diamond just looks boring without any facettes. Later the criteria were: seldom, hard (mohs > 7), looking beautiful and used for jewelry.To be considered a gemstone, a mineral had to be at least able to scratch glass. Currently, the World Jewelry Organisation considers both amethyst and agate stones to be gemstones. The term "semi-precious" is no longer used since at least three decades.
Okay, I see you are able to be reasonable about this. So I have a few questions/observations.
The Native Americans and the Jews have also been victims of the most horrible forms of colonialism, institutional and interpersonal racism, or both. Why are they not topping the charts for violent crime like the blacks? Yes Margaret Sanger (Planned Parenthood's origins) was a twisted bitch to be sure, but no state actor has seriously tried to exterminate the blacks. This has happened to both the N.As and the Jews.
In the specific case of Haiti, the blacks overthrew their colonial rulers by military force, not unlike what the soon-to-be USA did to the British Crown. In fact the black Haitians enjoyed more support among the locals against the occupying forces than the 30% support rate the Founding Fathers had. Their revolution likewise succeeded. At that point they had full control of already established, already productive resources. The nation fell apart under their black rule, instead of prospering like the white-run liberated USA. This is something you seem to willfully fail to understand, though it has already been explained, perhaps because it does not fit your victim narrative?
The USA in particular has not been the object of colonization in a long time. It has, if anything, become a colonizer or former colonizer. So why is it that American blacks, part of this colonizer culture, still underachieve in every metric compared to whites, Jews and Asians? Why do they commit more violent crimes than anyone else? Why do they fail to father their own children more than anyone else? This one is key - oppression by another group would invoke "us against them", making blacks MORE LIKELY to look out for each other, not less.
The problem with political history is that there is a socially approved narrative which claims to fit the facts. Then there are the actual observable facts, several of which don't fit cherished narratives that make us feel good about ourselves, make us feel like we're real compassionate progressive type of people who are no longer part of the problem. All kinds of justifications will be used by people who don't want to believe a thing, especially with a subject like "political science" or sociology, something not subject to rigorous laboratory experiments like physics. You say that for the last 50 years writers have railed against the effects of colonialism? How about the hundreds of years prior to that when it was accepted fact that blacks were inferior? That _was_ the prevailing view for much longer -- if you are going to appeal to consensus, one of those is much more well established.
It is only "undeclared" by default. I have a prenup with a specific QoS guarantee. For each day that she breaches her contractual responsibility, I can legally keep 3% of my monthly income for my personal use.
That you pulled this off is unusual. The difficulty most men face is that women act like a collective guild staffed by shrewd bargainers who understand collective bargaining. Most women would leave you before accepting those terms. Even if they loved you.
A marriage without a prenup is inherently unfair. Your wife can compel you to financially support her, while you get nothing in return. So instead of letting your state legislators decide how your marriage will work, you and your spouse should decide that for yourselves.
And if children are involved, you will quickly find out that family courts hate men by default. The woman wins automatically in any sort of custody dispute, unless there is some exceptional circumstance (you have video proof + multiple witnesses that she is a crack dealer, or something like that). And the concept of alimony is something the feminists themselves would have eliminated on the grounds that it is insulting, if they had integrity. It once served a useful purpose, back when women did not work outside the home and had no real way to earn an honest independent living.
Alimony = the concept that a woman has a "right" to "get used to" the financial lifestyle you provided, a right that continues after she leaves you. Treating women as equals would mean eliminating the concept altogether, or having courts force a divorced woman to render sexual favors to her ex-husband as long as he keeps up his payments because that is the lifestyle that *he* got used to.
Oddly enough the feminists aren't eager to address the blatant sexual discrimination that is Selective Service (military draft) either. It's as though they want all the privileges of men but none of the burdens. That's hardly striving for equality.
I'm just curious, would diamond wafers offer any serious advantages over current silicon? Heat conduction, maybe?
Long version: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369702107703498
Short version:
Diamond promises to be superior in most properties that are important for electronic components.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I'll give you an alternate hypothesis. A British colony with a dominant British culture makes a successful nation when it becomes independent. Hence the United States, Canada, and Australia. Hong Kong deserves further analysis, but it has never become independent. Vietnam and Haiti, having been French colonies, don't have the underlying culture (of human rights properly defined) and thus failed as nations. Spanish and Portugese colonies (all of South and Central America except Belize (and French Guiana which is still a colony)) are all failures in comparison to the U.S., Canada, and Australia.
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She gets 90%. The government gets 40% or more in taxes. Where does that leave you?
Screwed. Isn't that the point of this arrangement?
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
I notice that you didn't include India as a former colony, or the African colonies. Here is another alternate hypothesis. British culture is racist and genocidal and in some countries it invaded, it managed to exterminate the natives, creating in the process a homogeneous society, that can develop easier. French or Spanish invaders stopped killing the locals when they surrendered, and mixed with them, creating less cohesive societies, with different backgrounds and ways. It's just an hypothesis. See how well it checks with reality as compared with yours.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Actually, slavery as an economic institution is interesting.
Slaves are efficient in situations where the cost of freedom and free workers is high; however, they're not exactly free. Raising a slave-child requires feeding and caring for something that does nothing useful for over a decade; while kidnapping a new slave from far away is a wasteful and expensive exercise. Adult slaves are useful, but must be fed and cared for; they become less-useful when sick, injured, and exhausted, and then require replacement when they can't be recovered to a healthy-enough state to produce more than their upkeep. Caring for slaves is, thus, expensive; it's less-expensive than alternatives in certain types of poor societies.
In a free economy, we let people breed on their own. They come sign up for work. Population grows to exceed prosperity (Malthusian growth--a very old theory, but one that's roughly-correct), and you get about 4%-8% unemployment. These people work, produce, and then are given a portion of their production to keep; they purchase things, increasing the amount sellable and thus the amount of profit for the richer; and they must purchase their own means of survival, taking the cost and risk of slave upkeep off the employer.
The important economic principle of a free society is simple: If an individual becomes too poor to survive, he dies, and we capitalize on his efforts until that point and avoid most of the costs (and distribute what remains); if the great span of any level of your labor force becomes too poor to survive (notably, minimum-income households), your labor force collapses and your economy fails.
In other words: a nation which doesn't fit into the narrow set of conditions for which slavery makes economic sense actually functions better with a free labor force, because that labor force's well-being is tied to its productivity, and thus laborers work and businesses provide wage sufficient for survival in general. The loss of a slave costs someone a lot of wasted productivity (expressed as money), while the loss of a free laborer who fails financially costs less and is distributed pretty broadly across the entire economy.
As nations become wealthier, the expense of robust welfare falls, while its benefits grow. Early welfare systems used poor houses: we couldn't afford to pay for the poor's survival, so we placed them into what are essentially work-prisons and made them produce, thus lowering the net-cost of caring for the poor by deriving wealth from them. As European and American nations became more-wealthy, unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, and other social programs arose, costing little enough to not harm the economy while benefiting us with the maintenance of the bottom of the labor force. These programs protect the laborer, and they save us the trouble of part of the labor force dying off in poverty--because a reserve laborer (unemployed) is essentially-free, while a dead reserve laborer cannot be employed until some child is grown into an adult ready for labor, at obviously-great expense.
Now, stronger welfare systems are becoming popular, such as specific forms of universal basic incomes (e.g. a universal social security). Such systems cost less if your nation is sufficiently-wealthy--that is: in a rich nation, taxes don't increase on the wealthy, and they sharply-decrease as you move toward the lower incomes. They better stabilize the poor, reducing the cost of damage to the reserve labor force. Most importantly, they increase job replacement rate and spread out job reduction over time: rapid technical progress (e.g. automation) causes its job-reducing impact over a wider time span, and restores lost jobs more-quickly, reducing the severity of associated recessions. This leads to more-stable economies and wealthier nations.
Slavery isn't automatically prosperity because slaves aren't free, and they aren't even particularly efficient.
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